The pilgrim church and other sermons

LIBRARY

TORONTO

Register No.

1 "

THE PILGRIM CHURCH

A ^ / / 60^ O
/

THE

PILGRIM CHURCH

AND OTHER SERMONS

BY THE

REV. PERCY C. AINSWORTH

CHARLES H. KELLY

15-35 CITY ROAD, AND z6 PATERNOSTER ROW, E.G.

FIRST EDITION . December 1909.

Reprinted . . February 1910, November 79/0, May

CONTENTS

PACK

FOREWORD 7

I. THE PILGRIM CHURCH . . . .15

II. STAR COUNTING AND HEART HEALING . 28

III. 'TELL us PLAINLY' 40

IV. A PLEA FOR THE PRICELESS . . .52
V. THE MIRACULOUS DRAUGHT OF FISHES . 62

VI. THE SYNAGOGUE AND THE HOUSE . . 75

VII. MISTAKEN SUPPOSITIONS . 87

VIII. A NEW YEAR SERMON .... 97

IX. THE OPEN WINDOW 107

X. HEARING FOR OTHERS . . . .117

XI. THE LORD'S SONG IN A STRANGE LAND . 127

XII. TWILIGHT AND TREMBLING . . .138

XIII. HEROISM^. 147

XIV. THE BURIED WELLS . . . .157
XV. FAITH AND HASTE 168

XVI. THE BROOK THAT DRIED UP . . .176

XVII. 'Now NAAMAN WAS A LEPER, BUT ' . 184

XVIII. CONSECRATION OF THE COMMONPLACE . 192

5

Contents

PAGE

XIX. THE LARGE ROOM . ... 201

XX. GOING IN THE STRENGTH OF THE LORD . 210

XXL INSPIRATION AND OUTLOOK . . .218

XXII. TRUE IMPERIALISM 227

XXIII. THE HIRELING SHEPHERD . . . 235

XXIV. THE WILDERNESS AND THE SUNRISE . 246

FOREWORD

THE simple facts of Percy Clough Ainsworth's quiet
life may soon be written : the hidden springs of his
influence and charm it would take long to trace. He
was born at Woodbridge in Suffolk in 1873. His
father, the Rev. William Ainsworth, was a Wesleyan
minister, honoured and successful in his calling, of
great force of character, and heroically patient under
much physical suffering. Genius, like knighthood,
does not pass by earthly inheritance, yet the Spirit
who brings the gift loves to visit the home of puritan
grace and strength. Percy Ainsworth received a
heritage of fortitude from both his parents.

The home was singularly sunny, with an eager
intellectual atmosphere. Brothers and sisters vied
with one another in fresh thought and humour : the
good fruits of the mind were never frost-bitten. Percy
early learned to value aright his gifts, and this training
of encouragement helps to explain his modest self-
reliance and secret faithfulness in following the bent
of his original powers. His education was obtained
chiefly at Batley Grammar School and Lincoln

7

Foreword

Grammar School. From the latter he matriculated
at London University, and entered Didsbury College
in 1893 to prepare for the Wesleyan ministry.

He came to college with a good equipment of
school knowledge and a habit of conscientious work,
ready for the impulse which would make him a
vigorous and independent thinker. Dr. R. Waddy
Moss, whose knowledge of the students and interest
in them never failed, writes of him as follows : ' As
a student he read widely and profitably, thereby
attaining a good working knowledge of the best
English classics. He was attracted by good style
and fond of the poets and essayists, though by no
means neglectful of the novelty and intrinsic value of
thought that had an ethical bearing. It can hardly
be said that he gave promise of the ripeness in the
pulpit which in a very few years' time he began
to exhibit. He was a somewhat shy, self-conscious
man, who gradually grew into the easy mastery of
himself and his conditions. Of his character and
influence, nothing less than the highest should be
said. His life at college provided exactly the kind
of discipline he needed at that time ; and he left it
with a wider outlook and with enforced convictions,
and soon proved himself to be a great gift of God to
our Church.' Those closely-packed sentences are
full of insight and truth.

8

Foreword

Percy Ainsworth's disposition was non-aggressive,
influencing by attraction, not dominating by force.
There was even a touch of reserve about him in those
days. His intimate friends alone knew his fund of
merriment, his quick eye for grotesque contrasts
and unexpected harmonies, and his readiness in wit.
Unexpectedness was a refreshing essential quality of
his mind, shown in many ways. When in bachelor
rooms, he kept a few snakes as pets, and watched
their career with an interest half scientific and half
humorous. He justified the strange hobby by the
strange argument that we ought to feel a special
compassion for the snake since it was our fellow
sufferer from the tragedy of Eden. His range of
interests was very wide. He was a keen athlete,
something of a naturalist, an excellent photographer,
and a lover of music and sketching. He published a
good deal of poetry in various magazines. It was
always strong in the sense of mystery and in yearning
for the distance, with great charm in phrasing and
a haunting musical quality. The workmanship in
some poems is so exquisite that there is little doubt
he might have gained no inconsiderable rank as a
poet but for his steadfast regard to his supreme
work.

In all these pursuits the master motive may be
traced — the love of beauty. In that light he looked

9

Foreword

at everything : by that avenue he came to his life-
work. One imagines that the loveliness of the
Christian faith lured him in the beginning; and
though toil and trial and contact with the sinful and
the love of children cast him upon its mightier
potencies ere long, he yet never lost the artist view.
No one saw the beauty of sorrow more than he. This
love of beauty blended with his instinctive purity to
become the beauty of holiness in himself and his work.
After leaving College in 1896 Percy Ainsworth was
appointed to Horsham for a year, and then spent three
years at Weedon, Daventry. This might be called
his receptive period. ' I was sent into the country/
he said, ' to rusticate and grow a soul.' Country life
had an endless charm for him, and he was intensely
happy despite the limited scope of such work. In
1900 he was ordained at Burslem, and went to Felix-
stowe for a three years' term. The appointment suited
him well. The sea comforted his poetic nature, and
the congregations of residents and summer visitors
encouraged his preaching ability. It was the period
when his executive powers were brought to a fine
edge. He laboured with minute industry, counting no
occasion worthy of less than his best. The pages of
the local Church magazine were enriched by writings
which are both literature and revelation, evidencing
the ripening of thought and style.

10

Foreword

In 1903 Conference designated him to the care
of Wesley Chapel, Birmingham ; and the period of
achievement and recognition began. Early the
following year he married Miss Gertrude Fisk, of
Felixstowe. The event was one of God's perfecting
touches. All our thoughts of that wedded life and
the happy home into which his two children were
born are saddened by the memory of its brief con
tinuance ; but though so short, it was without flaw or
seam — a very perfect thing. No outward interest
ever rivalled his joy in his home, and he was at his
best there.

Encouraged by the warm appreciation of his people
and at their request, he published a small book of
addresses on the Beatitudes entitled The Blessed Life.
Its reception proved that Percy Ainsworth had
received an abundant entrance into another province
of usefulness. The Rev. Arthur Hoyle, in the
Methodist Times, gave fine praise to the spiritual
insight of the new writer ; and other reviews followed.
Since then the little volume has travelled far and
wide, even crossing the Atlantic to be seed for other
men's harvests. His devotional meditations on the
Psalms began forthwith to appear in the Methodist
Times. His writing was as water from a hill-spring,
rising from the depths and offering itself in sunshine.
He became a welcome noonday preacher at the

ii

Foreword

*

Central Hall, and was even honoured with an invi
tation to the historic pulpit of Carr's Lane, which,
however, he was unable to accept.

His last appointment was to the Eccles Circuit,
Manchester, where he did a great work. Quietly
pursuing the leading of God in his own spirit, he was
the same unassuming, brotherly man — the same home-
lover — to the end. Recognition brought him no
foolish elation, and it could scarcely make him happier
than industry, godliness, and ' the joy of the working '
had made him before it came. Toward the close of
his three years at Eccles the shadows gathered darkly
over the home. His wife passed through a serious
illness, and there were other like sorrows. Just when
his friends were wondering what his next step in good
work would be, news came that he was ill with typhoid
fever ; and before the danger was realized, a further
message told that on July I, 1909, Percy Ainsworth
had passed away. His next step was that into the
Real Presence : the period of the Life Everlasting had
begun.

The following sermons, collected and edited with
affectionate care by his friend, the Rev. A. Kenrick
Smith, with the assistance and counsel of the Rev.
F. R. Smith, are his best eulogy. Much was said about
him by sorrowful friends at the various memorial
services and in Conference. It is noteworthy that all

12

Foreword

these men, each seeking for the truest and deepest
word to say, and without any collusion, agree in laying
aside reverently his varied talents, his skill of words,
his poetic fancy, his mysticism, and find the supreme
secret of his power in his goodness. The Rev. F. R.
Smith voiced this conclusion in his memorial sermon.
'Percy Ainsworth could never have been Percy
Ainsworth but for the purity of his spirit, the depth
of his faith, and the strength of his loyalty to God and
the service of man.'

W, S H.

The Pilgrim Church

1 am a stranger in the earth. — Ps. cxix. 19.

ALL that lies behind these words is more easily felt
than set forth. * I am a stranger in the earth.'
We cannot discover that that is a confession of faith,
unless we first of all come to understand that it is a
confession of feeling. There is something here as
elusive and indescribable as the wistfulness of an
autumn evening. It defies all analysis. It is not an
idea. It is a mood. Now in our busy life we are
wont to make light of moods, as it is right and neces
sary that we should. When there is something to be
done, the question of whether or no we are in the mood
to do it is of tenth-rate importance. In the presence
of manifest duty it is our privilege to treat an unpro-
pitious mood with scant courtesy. We may have to
sweep it out of our path without so much as an 'if
you please.' Indeed, that is usually the only effective
way of dealing with moods that do not fit our tasks.
They may seem to be slight wisps of things, but they
have a way of barring the path of action. They will

15

The Pilgrim Church

not listen to reason. I think the psychology of it is
this, that whenever you argue with a mood, the mood
itself provides the argument, and, of course, has a crush
ing reply ready. No, nothing but a sudden rough
handling is of any avail. It is no good asking a mood to
stand aside and let you pass. You must knock it down
and walk over it. Deeds, not words, is the motto for
mere moodiness. But whilst we ought to assert our
independence of moods in the fulfilment of our active
duties, we are bound to confess our dependence on
them in our quest after truth. It is part of the mystery
of life that that which is a difficulty in one place is an
assistance in another. The very mood that is a foe
to action may be a friend to thought. And we need
that friend sometimes. Some of the most precious
things in life — visions, assurances, understandings —
cannot be ours but by the grace of a fit and seemly
mood. The mood does not give us these things, nor
does its disappearance take them away from us, but it
helps us to receive them and it helps us to know that
we have them.

Now when the singer of this song spoke of himself
as * a stranger in the earth ' he gave utterance to a
mood ; but if we look for the things that went to the
making of that mood we shall find that it stood for a
vital and precious experience.

Perhaps there is something here that is inwoven into
16

The Pilgrim Church

human nature. Man has always been a stranger in
the earth ; and all his efforts to make himself at home,
however successful they have been for the momenfc
have always been pitiably futile in the long run.
Paganism in its loneliness coined the phrase, ( Mother
earth/ but humanity has found little comfort in the
use of it. The phrase claims that our true home life
is here in the midst of the years. It seeks to make
this world a homelier place than ever it can be. If it
had been a true word, this word ' Mother earth/ then
the red dawn would have touched men as does the
kindling of a hearth-fire, the mountains would have
seemed but the massive walls of a garden, the stars
would have uttered, in their own grand way, the
message that twinkles in the lamplight of a cottage
window. But we know, as all who have gone before
have known, that this is not so. Man has ever been
homeless in the dawn. The eastern light has never
domesticated men : it has always made them restless
adventurers. The day comes in upon the wings of
mystery and sometimes departs with a glory that makes
the heart ache, we know not why. The mountains
are sacraments of a power beyond our understanding.
They do not offer shelter, they waken aspiration.
They do not stand for reassuring limits, they search
our hearts with a sense of the illimitable. And if the
stars are lamps they light an endless pathway. And

B 17

The Pilgrim Church

then there is the persistent fascination of the skyline.
The vital point of human interest has ever been not
the hearth but the horizon.

Just when we're safest there's a sunset touch,
A fancy from a flower-bell, some one's death,
A chorus-ending from Euripides —
And that's enough for fifty hopes and fears
As old and new at once as nature's self.

So, speaking in a broad sense, we might say that the
human soul has always in some dim way felt that it is
' a stranger in the earth.' But the natural man does
not like to feel like this. He tries to shake the feeling
off. And with some success. True as it is that the
earth is full of sacramental meanings, it is equally true
that man has been able to settle down in some fashion
in spite of them. By dint of making much of his
body and little of his soul, much of the outward things
of life and little of the inward, much of the hour and
little of eternity : in short, by dint of an obstinately
irreligious attitude, he has been able to tread the
solemn and holy sacraments of life beneath his feet
and to reach a measure of satisfaction and comfort
amid material things. Indeed, there is a kind of con
tentment and security, a certain easy familiarity with
the world in which we live, an aptitude for trifles, a
satisfaction with coarse and fleeting things, that is the
Nemesis of unbelief. It is the Christian faith that

18

The Pilgrim Church

touches all this busy world with strangeness for
us, and makes us at home in the heavenly places. It
is faith that turns life into a brief journey through an
alien land and kindles the real homelight beyond the
verge of the world. This sense of being strangers in
the earth has always marked the lives of the saints.
They, of all men, have most deeply felt it and most
freely confessed it. They have always sought after ' a
country of their own,' always desired ' a better country,
that is a heavenly.' They have never settled down,
never felt quite at home in the world. Their hearts
have ever been toward ' Jerusalem which is above — the
mother of us all.' And this is the thing in the life of
a saint that the worldling has never understood and
never really despised. It must be conceded that the
mood in which the world has seemed an alien land
has sometimes taken a wrong turn, and has been pro
ductive of some aloofness from the common life and
some indifference to things that, after all, really matter.
But this mood at its best is associated with the most
lustrous fidelity, the most splendid endurance, the
most catholic sympathy and the most ungrudging
service the world has ever known.

Perhaps the Church is too much at home in the
world. We talk much about meeting men on their
own ground, about understanding the spirit of our age,
about keeping abreast of the times. Within certain

B 2 19

The Pilgrim Church

very narrow limits there is truth in these phrases ; but
there is not in all of them put together, and in all
kindred pleas and policies, one atom of the truth that
saves the world. There are some who would have the
Church sit at the feet of the successful business man.
They rise in our councils, these baptized worldlings,
and talk as if the things we really need could be picked
up in the head office of a smart and hustling firm.
They say we do not speak the language of the people
and are not sufficiently in touch with all the swift,
subtle changes in the world's shifting and complex
life. And such criticism is wrong, as all shallow things
are wrong. It is not this world we need to know better,
it is the other world. It is not the language of the
street we need to master, it is the language of the
kingdom where He reigns whose voice has the music
and throb of many waters. We need to move with
surer step and keener vision and warmer response
amid eternal things. The busy, self-satisfied, success
ful world may respect us in a way for knowing some
thing of its methods and manifesting some familiarity
with the inner fashion of its achievements ; but the
world in the main is neither successful nor self-
satisfied. The sick and the dying, the heartbroken
and the desperate, the burdened and oppressed, will
find nothing in our easy up-to-dateness to encourage
them to trust us with one shamefast confession, one

20

The Pilgrim Church

spiritual difficulty, one precious secret of hope or fear
or sorrow.

It is to the stranger in the earth that the fore-
wandering souls of men instinctively turn. He is
the only man who never loses his way. It is to him
that men have ever come in their confusion and their
despair. It is the sojourners in the world, the mani
fest travellers to a better country, who are made the
confessors of troubled hearts. It is the pilgrims of
the faith who have the only availing mission to this
world's deepest bitterness and unbelief. Of course,
we cannot travel through the world as the patriarchs
travelled through it. We cannot emulate in the
outwardness of things the simplicity of the early
Christian Church. Our complex organization is
inevitable. It were foolish to gird at the 'office
work' involved in much of our religious enterprise.
Our closer touch with the various movements for
dealing with all kinds of social disability and distress
will probably increase rather than diminish the need
for such work. Since civic and political machinery
exists and provides a medium for the expression and
enforcement of moral and spiritual convictions, let
the Church make the most of it. The cry of * No
polities' is sometimes raised by the devil. But let
the Church, having made the most of all the means
for doing good provided by the methods and develop-

21

The Pilgrim Church

ments of our corporate life, know that that ' most ' is
not very much. Let us not think that all this means
getting into touch with the world. We are never so
near the world, in the one way in which it is worth
while being near it, as in those precious hours when
all but God and heaven is touched with strangeness
for us ; and when the heart within us knows, as it
knows nothing else, that it seeks a city out of
sight.

The Church has sometimes tried to impress the
world by her material resources or by her political
influence. She has competed with the financier and
the diplomatist for the prize of power. And she has
failed, as it was utterly right and inevitable that she
should fail. She has been the home of learning and
the mother of the best civilization ; but it is not for
these things that her children love her, nor is it
for these things that the world at the last will do
her honour. Her real work to the world has always
lain in this, that she has kept the music of a pilgrim
song ringing in men's hearts, making it impossible
for them to settle down to the gain and comfort of
the hour, easily forgetful of the venture of faith, the
crusade of righteousness, and the pilgrimage of love.
She has roused life's truest wander-thirst in a world
too ready to be content with the thing that is nearest,
to take the obvious and immediate for its portion and

22

The Pilgrim Church

its prize, and to try to build a comfortable house
where there is scarcely time to pitch a tent.

And the power to do this is the most precious
thing the Church has ever possessed. Far beyond
her mission and power to make this world endurable
she must rank her mission and power to make the
other world real. There may be a danger lest this
supreme charge of the faith should lose its supremacy
with us, and lest we should think to win and hold the
people on lower and less spiritual terms.

You will not misunderstand me when I say that
we may make too much of our duty to fight against
everything that robs men and women and little
children of any of the physical comfort, the material
advantage, the intellectual and social opportunity
that should be theirs. This is our task — a task that
the Church shares with many who ignore her faith
and contemn her vision. But there is a task that is
hers alone, and that is to put men in touch with the
eternal world of love and truth and peace — their
spiritual fatherland. These two tasks are insepar
able, but they are not identical. Some think that by
means of its newly aroused social sympathies and
activities the Church will rehabilitate herself in the
eyes of the world. My friends, in as far as such
rehabilitation is necessary, it will take a great deal
more than social activities, and institutional methods,

23

The Pilgrim Church

and all the paraphernalia of temporal reform to
accomplish it. We do an injustice to the religion
we profess, and to the souls we seek to save, if we
think we shall gain the ear of the world by an
economic gospel. We shall succeed at last in the
work God has given us to do. The kingdom will
come ; but it will only come as we bring to a social
programme that seems to be in complete touch with
the situation, a faith that makes us strangers in the
earth. When men speak of Jesus of Nazareth as
having been at home in the world, as having spoken
the language of the people, as having taken an interest
in the simple round of daily life, they are only playing
on the surface of all that Christ was and of all that
He meant and did. He was gracious, patient, self-
sacrificing, accessible in the world, but He was at
home in the heavenly places. He used words that
were familiar and simple, and spoke of things men
saw about them, but His words always took men
beyond the thought of house and field, bread and
home, neighbour and kinsman. Men felt that He
saw something they did not see, and that His deepest
care for them often began just where their care for
themselves ended. He spoke their language and
seemed to tread their path ; but they saw that no
man ever spake as He spake, and the best among
them knew that He came from God and went to God.

24

The Pilgrim Church

And over the lives of all who love and serve Him He
has written these words : ' They are not of the world,
even as I am not of the world.' Do you not think
that we are in danger of attaching too much outward
significance to those words and not enough inward
significance? What are the distinctive features of
a Christian in the world? Beauty of character?
Yes ; but there are beautiful lives that do not profess
any religious faith. Integrity of conduct? Yes; but
there are many lives outside the pale of the Church
in whose business and social relationships and dealings
it would puzzle you to find a flaw. But the Christian
ought to be somehow better than all the kindest and
most honest men who do not possess his secret.
Surely it lies in his final attitude toward life — his
whole valuing and handling of the world. He ought
to have this higher loyalty, this spiritual patriotism,
this otherworldliness that does not wholly reveal
itself in the practice of life's common virtues, much
less in any eccentricities of habit, but in the subtle
texture of character, in the aroma of influence, in the
wistfulness of the soul's outlook. I say it is these
things (things that no man can describe and no man
can counterfeit) that mark the Christian in the world
and plead the cause of the eternal life with the world's
heart. Even against a background of high morality
the Christian should stand out. We say that a man

The Pilgrim Church

is as honest as the daylight, and we seem to have
given him high praise. But you apply that phrase
to St. Stephen or St. Paul — or, may I say, to Jesus
Himself — and it becomes almost an insult. 'They
are not of the world ' — no, not even of the world at
its best. Morality enables a man to face the world
with an unflinching gaze ; but it cannot teach him to
hold the world with a loose grasp. Unworldliness at
the last is not a matter of ethics : it is a matter of
outlook. We say sometimes that we feel such a man
is good. It isn't a calculation : it is an experience.
We know beyond all argument that he is not of the
world. He belongs elsewhere. And, my friends, I
believe with all my heart that we are all called into
and capable of a faith that would give to our lives
the same haunting, heavenly influence.

There are other things gathering around this phrase,
1 A stranger in the earth/ of which one would like to
speak. One might point out how this sojourning
spirit is woven into all life's availing courage and
patience. One can bear a good deal on a journey.
As Thomas Champness used to put it — and surely it
was one of the loveliest things he ever said — ( It's easy
passing milestones when you're going home.'

But let it suffice us to remember just this, that to
be in touch with human needs we must be filled with
heavenly satisfactions ; that the world will never be

26

The Pilgrim Church

one whit the better off for our diplomacies and
stratagems, our clever opportunism and our time-
bred familiarity with life^ and that all the really
precious things in our earthly heritage are found
in the track of a band of pilgrims.

II

Star Counting and Heart-<Hea!ing

He healeth the broken in heart ; . . . He telleth the number of the
stars. — Ps. cxlvii. 3, 4,

IT is not easy for us to get these two thoughts into
our minds at the same time. Still harder is it
for us to think them as one thought. It seems such a
far cry from all the stars of heaven to one poor bleeding
heart — from those myriad points of fire to a few
human tears. We see the sweep of the stars, and we
walk in the shadow of pain ; but in the bitter things we
suffer, how little use we make of the great things we
see ! The stars set us dreaming and yearning. They
carry us out beyond the landmarks of history and
the chart of experience. And then just one sharp plea
wrung from life in its sore need — and there are no
stars. In a moment we are shut up to the short view
of life. So easily we get lost in the littleness and the
bitterness of things. When the heartbreak comes
the starlight goes. Yes, sometimes just a little dust
of the road can put the stars out for us. But now
comes all this about ? Why do starlight and trouble

28

Star Counting and Heart Healing

so often stand unrelated thoughts in our minds, un
related fact in our lives ? One answer is found in the
make of our minds. With us one idea often excludes
another that really belongs to it. We have not a
large enough mental grasp. We look up at the stars
and we forget our little world ; we look out upon our
little world and we forget the stars. We lose the
years in the thought of the hour, and the hour in the
thought of the ages. We seem unable to hold on to
a great thought when we are in one of life's narrow
places; yet it is just in that narrow place that the
great thought can do most for us. We live by hours,
and so we count by hours. We are pilgrims, so our
standard of measurement is a step. In our frag
mentary thinking we draw dividing lines across the
undivided, and fail to see that the limited and the
illimitable are not two things but one. We stumble
over the very axioms of life. We say it is obvious
that the part belongs to the whole ; but we often act
as if the whole were one thing and the part were
another and entirely different thing, and as if there
were no discoverable relation between the two. So
when* this great word about the God who numbers the
stars is given to us we say, Le,t me get away from my
little world and think it out. And we do think it out
— out of our reach, out of our experience, out of our
lives. When shall we learn that we cannot get the

29

Star Counting and Heart Healing

best out of a thought simply by thinking it ? To get
the real help of a great thought you must trust it, you
must live it. Nowadays many people are so busy
thinking things out that they scarcely ever think
anything in. And it is the truth you think into your
life that really counts. And to do that, thought must
clasp hands with faith and love and toil. From a
purely speculative and intellectual point of view, I
defy any man to preach a gospel of comfort from the
text, ' He telleth the number of the stars.* Many a
man has felt his helplessness and his loneliness beneath
the stars. He has said, God is immeasurably remote
from my little life down here among the shadows. Is
it likely that amid the vast and intricate calculations
of the universe He will take account of an insignificant
fraction like my life ? How should He think upon me
when He has all the stars to count ? How should He
miss me from the fold when He is shepherding all the
heavenly hosts ? Thus for some the greatness of God
has been made to spell the loneliness of man. That
is the shivering logic of an intellectual conception of
the Deity. The psalmist who spoke of star counting
and heart healing in the same breath had got beyond
that. The deep, persistent needs of his life had
brought him there. It was not by a mere chance that
he chose to speak of heartbreak when he sought to
link earth with heaven and to lift the fretful mind of

30

Star Counting and Heart Healing

man up to the thought of God's eternal presence and
power. Heartbreak is not an idea, it is an experience.
Yes, and it is an experience that only the stars can
explain and only divinity can account for. It is only
in these words, linking stars and hearts together, that
we can find a noble and a satisfying interpretation of
pain. Why do we suffer ? We suffer not because we
are akin to earth, but because we are akin to heaven.
The final secret of life's pain lies in life's high and
eternal relationship. We have a present kinship with
the stars and with all they stand for. They stand for
the things above us and beyond us, whereof the possi
bilities and the beginnings are within us. We cannot
help wanting to reach them, for the true life of our
heart comes from beyond them. It is a greater thing
than we have counted it to be. Its native air is blown
from beyond the stars. It is up there above the star
light that you must find the explanation of the
stricken conscience of the sinner and the yearning
heart of the'saint. Heartbreak is not to be regarded
as a rare and tragic episode in the human story. This
world only knows sorrow as an incident. It is, for it,
a cloud upon the sun, sometimes darkening all the
after day. It is a voice of weeping or a choked silence
in the shadowy dusk of the river's edge. But, my
friends, the last true sorrow of life is not on this wise.
It is not dealt out to one here and another there as

Star Counting and Heart Healing

a bitter judgement or a wholesome discipline. It is
inwoven into life. To miss it is to miss life. It is
the price of the best, It is the law of the highest,
When after what we sometimes call the long farewell
you have seen a sorrow-stricken man bearing a
bleeding heart out to the verge of the world, beyond
the last outpost of earthly sympathy and beyond the
kindly kingdom of human help, you have seen some
thing for which earth has no healing — but you have
not learned anything approaching the whole truth
concerning heartbreak. There is the broken and the
contrite heart, the heart that is seeking sainthood, and
fainting and failing and aching in the quest. There
is the broken and the yearning heart, that strains and
throbs with lofty longings and the burden of the valley
of vision. And to find healing for such sorrow a man
must find God. And He must be the God who counts
the stars. ' He telleth the number of the stars.'
That is a grand, breathless thought, but it is not too
grand. No thought of God narrower and lower than
that can ever truly comfort us. Only the Infinite can
heal the soul. God could not minister to strained
hearts if the stars were too much for Him. The
mystery of the stars and the mystery of human pain
are parts of one great mystery that is no mystery to
God, for He dwells beyond it in the light of perfect
knowledge, and penetrates it wholly with the warmth

32

Star Counting and Heart Healing

of perfect love. And that is the vision that the
human heart will always need. And that is the
vision that is fading from some men's minds to
day. Modern theology — at any rate a certain large
school of it — is in danger of belittling the greatness
of God in its attempts to show His nearness. The
immanence of God is a very precious and a very
glorious truth, but I think some are in danger
of forgetting just now that this truth owes
all that is vital and efficient in it to God's
transcendence. There was a time when the preacher
used to give out for his text, ' Behold, the nations are
counted as the small dust of the balance : behold, He
taketh up the isles as a very little thing.' He
preached the glory and the wisdom and the power of
God until men saw the universe as but one ray of
all that glory, one word of all that wisdom, one deed
of all that power. And with that tremendous back
ground he preached the effectual comfort of the ever
lasting Father. Some are getting afraid of that back
ground. And we need to remind ourselves that the
human heart needs it and demands it, and will never
be truly satisfied with anything else. There is nothing
else large enough for you to write upon it the meanings
and the sanctions and the purposes of God's healing
mercy. But to look at it from man's side, the gospel
that is to bring availing and abiding comfort to a
c 33

Star Counting and Heart Healing

world like ours needs a tremendous background : it
needs a transcendent sweep. If you have a doctrine
of the divine immanence that veils the stars — that
seems to make the truth of God a more familiar and
compassable thing — that silences the challenge of
God's lonely sovereignty and His transcendent and
mysterious glory, you have not got the doctrine that
will meet your deepest needs or win a response from
the depths of other hearts. This shame-stricken,
yearning world needs the glory of God as much as it
needs His mercy. Jesus came to reveal both. ' The
Word was made flesh and dwelt among us (and we
beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of
the Father) full of grace and truth.' We can go back
into the ages before Christ came, and learn from the
psalmist how to apprehend and deliver the gospel of
God's saving grace — how to interpret and apply God's
final and complete message of healing, sent forth into
the broken heart of the world. He telleth the number
of the stars. He healeth the broken in heart. The
singer of that song linked the healing of man's broken
heart with a profound and transcendent conception of
God. And the healing of man's broken heart to-day
is to be linked with a profound (not intellectually, but
morally profound) and transcendent conception of
Jesus Christ. Christian people need to be on their
guard to-day lest the naturalistic atmosphere that we

34

Star Counting and Heart Healing

cannot help breathing (even if sometimes it nearly
chokes us by its lack of oxygen) should lead us un
consciously to place a too humanitarian emphasis on
the gospel of the divine Saviour. You may remind
men that Jesus drew lessons for life from the lilies
and the birds ; how that He was glad to watch the
patient oxen drawing the simple plough through the
brown earth (just such a plough as He Himself had
fashioned many a time in the carpenter's shop at
Nazareth); how, maybe, He loved the smell of the
fresh-turned furrow and the swing of the sower's arm
as he scattered the seed ; how He smiled on the
little children and talked with the tanned and bearded
fisherman on the shores of Tiberias. But do not think
that this is the story that brings Christ nearest to the
heart of the world. We sing —

Be with me when no other friend
The mystery of my heart can share;

And be Thou known when fears transcend,
By Thy best name of Comforter.

In our weakest and loneliest hours, in the most inward
and essential necessities of our lives, it is the mastery
and the mystery of the eternity of Christ that we
need.

O to have watched Thee through the vineyards wander,
Pluck the ripe ears and into evening roam ;

Followed, and known that in the twilight yonder,
Legions of angels shone about Thy home.
C2 35

Star Counting and Heart Healing

How tremendously true are these words of the poet
to the heart's real need and experience. This troubled
world does not find peace at the feet of the gracious
and inspired and morally perfect Prophet of Nazareth
uttering words of wisdom amid the vineyards and
in the path through the cornfields. In its profound
spiritual sorrow and need, led by the instincts of a
broken heart, it has followed the Christ home through
the twilight of His humanity on into the glory of His
divine Sonship and the light of His eternal dwelling-
place. It is to the kingliest and profoundest and
most transcendent words of Jesus that the human
heart clings. Go to that devout man who lost his
dearest friend but yesterday, and ask him what
Scripture he read ere he went out this morning into
a lonely world. But there ! you need not ask him.
You know what it was. ' In My Father's house are
many mansions. I go to prepare a place for you.' Or
go to that man whose heart is aching under the strain
of terrible temptation, and ask him what word of the
Nazarene is sheltering his soul, and maybe he will say
unto you : ' My sheep hear My voice, and I know
them, and they follow Me. And I give unto them
eternal life ; and they shall never perish, neither shall
any man pluck them out of My hand. My Father,
which gave them unto Me, is greater than all ; and no
man is able to pluck them out of my Father's hand.

36

Star Counting and Heart Healing

I and My Father are one.' My friends, let us not
think that by emphasizing the godhead of Christ we
make Him less real or less near to the hearts of the
children of men. It is the godhead of Christ that
keeps Him near us. It is the mystery of Christ that
heals us.

Do not think those are foolish words, or that
I am straining after a paradox. It is a matter
of common knowledge that the central truth of the
gospel — even the sacrifice of Christ for the sins of
the whole world — has been the focal point of the
mightiest thought- conflict of all history. That con
flict has not subsided. The thought of the Christian
Church has not yet met in one common theory of
the atonement. And you are well aware that the
leaders in this fight have often been men of saintly
lives, who have not failed to find perfect satisfaction
and peace and hope at the cross of the world's
Saviour. And if there is one paramount lesson to be
learned from this battle, where many theories claim
the right to account for one experience, it is this, that
the Saviour has to pass our highest comprehension in
order to meet our deep need. ' He telleth the number
of the stars. . . . He healeth the broken in heart/ Do
not be afraid to put these two facts side by side. Do
not be afraid to carry too divine and mysterious and
ineffable a gospel to a suffering world. For it is to

37

Star Counting and Heart Healing

just such a gospel that the human heart will respond.
That new school of theology to which I have already
made reference has tried, in the interests of what it
hoped would be nearer and clearer teaching, to draw
a veil across all the mystic starry facts in the gospel
story. It has said : ' Men cannot believe in the in
carnation of the Son of God. Science has made it
impossible for men to believe in such a scientifically
lawless event.' But ages before science was born, sin
and sorrow and the mysterious fathomless needs of
the human soul had made it impossible for men to
believe in anything less stupendous and divine. It
has said : ' It is no good preaching a gospel of miracle
in a clear thinking age like this.' And it has given
the world a Christ that few can understand and no
one can trust. It has underrated human need. It
has compassed the heartbroken with a thievish and
impotent philosophy. It has overlooked the fact that
a thing may be to a man at once and consciously an
intellectual difficulty and a spiritual necessity. My
friends, the Christian creed is not a great intellectual
production : it is the voice of the Christian experience
trying to utter the unutterable. It is the outcome not
of what men have thought, but of what they have felt.
It is full of that which baffles the mind of the dialecti
cian and builds the life of the saint. And when men
have spun their last specious and compassable theory

38

Star Counting and Heart Healing

of religion and of life, the weary and heartbroken
children of men will be found breaking through the
meshes of argument, sweeping away the human
glosses from divine truth, and casting themselves
instinctively upon that mystery of mercy and might
that is as the mystery of the stars. Yes, and finding at
the hands of the God who counts the stars, the touch
of healing and the clasp of love.

Ill

'Tell us Plainly'

If Thou art the Christ, tell us plainly.— JOHN x. 24.

THE significance of this appeal does not dawn on
us all at once. Brought before the judgement-
bar of ' first sight ' it may succeed in passing itself off
as a blunt but honest and worthy attempt to find the
truth. But first sight is often blindness : and that is
how it comes to pass that so many of the judgements
delivered in life's court of first inquiry, where things
are decided in the twinkling of an eye, have to be
reversed. And our text is a case in point. If we
look at it carefully we shall come to see that this
plea the Jews made to Jesus, so frank and clear in
form, was blind, irreverent, and unjust. ' If Thou art
the Christ, tell us plainly.' The underlying assump
tion of that plea was that the person and place of
Jesus Christ could be summed up in a sentence, made
plain in a few words, concluded in a brief, positive
statement. As such, this plea betrayed ignorance
of the true nature of spiritual knowledge, the most
dreadful ignorance in life. It revealed a wrong

40

'Tefl us Plainly '

attitude towards eternal truth. It was an utter mis
conception of the meaning and method of a divine
revelation. It flouted the precious mystery of the
gospel. It ignored the sacred message of life's
parables and the vital teaching of its sacraments.
It utterly discounted the tremendous power of
spiritual suggestion, and discredited all the truest
instincts of the soul. And most of all, and worst
of all, it belittled the person and teaching and whole
fact of Christ. And keeping in touch with these
thoughts, without perhaps following any one of them
very far, I would have us gain such a view of the nature
of spiritual truth, and of the way it is made manifest
in human life, as shall save our minds and hearts
from the darkness — the narrow temporality of this plea
that the Jews made to Jesus — ' Tell us plainly.'

All speech has its limitations, and the plainer the
speech the narrower are those limitations. A plain
truth is necessarily a small truth. If you are deter
mined to say a plain thing you must be content to
say a very little thing. If plainness is your one object
you are committed to a fragmentary conception of
truth. Of course, I am speaking of the world of abid
ing spiritual realities. You can summarize all the out
ward facts of life. You can put exact account of the
weather into a sentence. And wherever it is possible
to be terse and concise and sharply definite, it is our

'TcD us Plainly'

duty to try to be so. In our concrete life, amid all
outward things, most of us would be better understood
if we said less. The things of the hour demand a
plainness of speech that befits the definition and
brevity of the hour. It is our duty to put a thing
into a nutshell — if it is no bigger than a nut. But
when we try to put illimitable truth into a nutshell,
we leave a good deal of it out. And that which we
may think we have stated we have probably misstated.
Limitation is own brother to perversion. History tells
us that it has never been more than a few steps from
the shrine of the partly true to the shrine of the wholly
false.

If a man can always say what he means, then he
does not always mean enough. A man may sacrifice
the eternal, the essential, the mysterious, the imperish
able in the interests of plain speech. He may come
unconsciously to distrust the thing he cannot state —
which is very likely the one absolutely trustworthy
thing in his life. And by-and-by there may come
a day when his collection of sharp definitions, and
compassable half-truths, and literal explanations shall
seem to him to exhaust the meaning of life. He has
fashioned out of the hours and the occasions of life a
local universe, an infinity caught and destroyed in
the coils of an explanation, an eternity that is written
on the face of a clock. He has fallen into that most

42

'Tell us Plainly'

subtle materialism that has done so much to weaken
the force of Christian dogmatics, and that has made
blind hours even in the lives of the saints ; the ma
terialism that seeks to imprison for ever a living and
growing thing in a final and inelastic form, to deal
with the infinite as if it were finite, and to set limita
tions to the illimitable — in the name of plainness.

But if you leave the last word of the Jews' plea out
of your reckoning, the plea itself is still a pitiably
blind and vain one. ' If Thou art the Christ, tell us.1
That appeal, as it stands, reveals an utter ignorance
of the way the truth advances in the earth and makes
its conquests in the souls of men. That advance and
conquest are not made essentially by means of words.
The truth depends strangely little upon verbal state
ment. Think of some of the great moments in our
common earthly experience, and you will find that even
there silence is the guerdon of life's highest knowledge
and most abiding assurance. We watch the path of
the dawn growing wider across an eastward sea, or feel
the infinite suggestion of skyline at eventide, or listen
to immortal harmonies until we hear, as Keats has
put it for us in one of the greatest lines in our language,
' the music yearning like a god in pain,' or we find the
bitter-sweet meaning of love, or stand by a grave as
deep as our heart, and lo ! we know something that
could never have been told us and that we can never

43

'TeU us Plainly'

tell to another. Our silence may be the silence of the
inarticulate, but it is also the silence of the enlightened.
We know with a clearness compared with which the
clearest speech is mere jargon. We see with a vision
that words, like a flock of birds, would only darken
with their wings.

And as it is with such great moments in our inner
life, so it is with life's most sacred relationships. The
two great bonds of social life are justice and love.
Look at these things. Consider the very terms of
their existence. Honour, one of the loveliest blooms
of justice, dwells in silence. It is an unutterable thing.
To try to state it is to make it something less than it
is. To explain it is to make it impossible. To fling
it about in gusts of words, as men have flung it, is to
reduce it, as men have reduced it, to a mere fiction,
void of all that is vital and binding. Without honour
life at its best is impossible. But honour is the last
thing that is mentioned among honourable men. If
they speak of it we know some one has lost it, and
words will never bring it back again. Or what need
of words has love ? They are not merely unnecessary,
they are confusing. To assert some things — and love
is one such thing and chief among them — is to cast
suspicion on their reality. If there are conditions that
seem to demand their declaration, these same condi
tions make that declaration vain. And the lesson of

'Tell us Plainly'

this law of silence running through life is just this.
The knowledge of a thing comes not by the tell
ing thereof. No man was ever told anything finally
worth knowing. No hearsay ever broke the silence
of life's inner room. It is not by means of the
utterances, the assertions, the dictations and defini
tions and reasonings of them that teach that ever any
man gained one truth for the everlasting succour of
his soul. The hours that bring the truth into a man's
soul are hours when the truth stands before him, in all
its radiant beauty too fair to need adorning, in all its
splendid strength too strong to need support, in all its
final and irresistible simplicity too simple to be in
terpreted. And the question of how many and how
luminous these hours shall be we each decide for our
selves. Jesus Christ came to kindle that light of
truth for us in every hour and place of life. He has
made all the hours luminous for the humble and
obedient heart. In Him the eternal truth is always
with us. That which we call the blankness of our
outlook is really the blindness of our hearts. For a
man given up to his prejudices, his passions, and his
sins, every hour is a blind hour. It is the better will
and not the clearer mind that catches the first gleam
of that true light that lighteth every man that cometh
into the world. In the matter of everlasting and final
truth no man can be intellectually certain whilst he is

45

'Tell us Plainly'

morally undecided. When the Jews said, ' If Thou
art the Christ, tell us plainly/ they ignored all this.
They failed to grasp the moral and spiritual nature of
Christ's Messiahship. They did what men, to their
endless perplexity and distress, have done in all ages
— they confused between information and assurance.
They missed the real reason for Christ's presence in
the world. Jesus did not come primarily to tell men
anything. Jesus came rather because the world had
been told all it could be told. The ministry of
voices and messages had reached its limits. Age
after age the Word had come to men through priest
and judge and prophet. Age after age the great
preface, 'Thus saith the Lord,' had rung in men's
ears and called to their hearts. And it was not
enough. On this wise God Himself could not make
His world wise unto salvation. So the Word was
made flesh. God clothed Himself not with language,
but with life. Christ is not God's messenger to the
world — He is God's message. So He answered the
questioning Jews, ' I told you.'

When had He told them ? When had He not told
them? His presence in the world, His character, His
spirit, His whole life, were one ceaseless utterance of
eternal truth. And if the Jews did not know this,
Jesus could not tell them. Statement could not
succeed where influence was unavailing. If He did

46

'Tell us Plainly'

not convince them, His words were of no avail. If
they did not feel something of what He was, they
could not accept anything He might say about Him
self. For as He stood before them He gathered into
His own person the first and last meanings of good
ness, truth, and love. In answering Philip's blind and
disappointing plea, 'Show us the Father,' Jesus
fastened upon one privilege, one supreme opportunity
that Philip had failed to turn to much account, and
it was the privilege of living under Christ's influence.
' Have I been so long with you and hast thou not
known Me?' In these words Jesus surely appealed
to something stronger than any claim He had made,
more wonderful than any work He had wrought. My
claims may have staggered you, My works may have
mystified you ; but, Philip, what about Me Myself?

In the case of another disciple, still more clearly did
Jesus point out the way of the soul to Himself.
When Simon made his great confession, 'Thou art
the Christ, the Son of the living God,' he won the
joyous benediction of Jesus. But why ? ' Blessed
art thou, Simon Bar-Jonah, for flesh and blood hath
not revealed it unto thee.' Simon had heard that
which could not be uttered. He had grasped that
which could not be formulated. He had understood
that which could not be explained. He had responded
not to what Christ said, but to what Christ was.

47

'Tell us Plainly '

His moral and spiritual attitude was the precise re
verse of that revealed by the plea, * If Thou art the
Christ, tell us plainly.' He had companied with
Jesus and communed with Him and learned to love
and obey Him ; and so he came where all who do this
have ever come, into touch with that eternal truth of
God that no words are strong enough to carry or
clear enough to set forth, the word beyond all words.

And we can all come there if we will. Jesus, who
could not answer this plea of the Jews for a plain
statement concerning Himself, always assumed that
He did not in the first instance require to be ex
plained to any soul that really needed Him. Perhaps
we who would preach Christ overlook that fact. Per
haps we spend too much time explaining Christ, and
not enough proclaiming Him. ' Him that cometh
unto Me I will in no wise cast out.' ' Come unto Me
all ye that labour, and are heavy laden, and I will give
you rest.'

Jesus stood in the world open-armed. He called
to men amid their burdens, toils and sorrows, amid
the very things that confuse the mind, and crush hope
and enterprise, and make for indifference and despair.
And it follows that He must be life's simplest and
most easily found fact for us all. There must be
some perfectly simple point of contact between every
human life and the divine Saviour. And there is,

48

'Tell us Plainly'

We need but to accept the verdict of our conscience,
the ultimatum of our human weakness, the sorrow
that waits for every sinful soul in the dreadful quiet
ness of life, and lo ! our trembling hands have touched
the Christ, and if we will let Him He will hold us
fast for evermore and lift us surely up to all the light
and love of God. But when we have touched the
fact of Christ we have not grasped it. And it is just
here that so many go wrong. It is here that the
foolish and sometimes petulant plea, ' tell us plainly,'
comes in. People underrate the tremendous sweep
and the profound reach of the fact they have just
touched. Jesus is not only the simplest need of the
human soul, He is the supreme fact of the universe.
He is at once the source and gathering-point of all
the scattered light which from the dawn of human
history to this moment has led man in his quest after
God. The fact of Christ is a stupendous fact. It
stands alone, not because it is distinct from all other
facts, but because it includes them. Every man is
needy enough if he but knew it, and maybe humble
and morally earnest enough, to find the fact, but no
man shall ever be wise enough to compass the fact.

My brother, perhaps, like some of old, you are wait
ing for a plain word. You think that some day you
will find the gospel of Jesus summed up for you in a
lucid sentence by the preacher, made clear and self-
D 49

'Tefl us Plainly'

evident in a creed by a theologian, carried beyond all
doubt by a bit of terse logic. Remember this, if you
forget all else, that Jesus does not begin by telling us
anything. He touches us. Your unrest, your heart-
hunger, the haunting shame of your yesterdays, the
haunting beauty of the ideal, the longing for purity
that will not be stifled, the judgements whispered
in the inner room, and all that sets you wrong with
yourself and the brother at your side and your Father
in heaven : all this, I say, is the work of the pierced
hands of Eternal Love upon your soul. And it is
vain to ask one question till you have answered that
touch.

And suppose we grow impatient of the shadows
and the mysteries that hang over and surround the
path of faith. We forget that the Christ whose hand
of mercy is stretched out, and who was so simply and
tenderly here amid the shadows of our pilgrimage, is
the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all
creation, and that He is before all things and in Him
all things consist. We forget the cosmic note in such
claims as these : ' I am the bread of life/ ' I am the
light of the world,' ' I am the way, the truth, and the
life.' It is not in one hour but in every hour of life
we come to find or miss the Christ of God. It is not
by one act but by every act of life we draw near to
or pass away from the eternal Saviour. He is for

50

'Tell us Plainly'

us the very world in and beyond the world. He is
the total circumstance of the soul. And whilst one
humble, tear-blurred look into His face of pity, one
frail but earnest groping for His hand of help, one
cry to Him out of the darkness and weakness of our
soul, one quiet, solemn, life-deep vow of amendment
by His grace, shall make us His, yet we need every
throb of our heart, every thought of our mind, every
instinct of our soul, every avenue of our being, every
hour of our life, yes, and surely all that waits us in
that timeless life beyond the years, to bring us from
the outer rim of light on towards the glowing centre ;
to bring us from the first tremulous hope and assur
ance of the awakened soul on into the vast, immeasur
able certainties of Christian communion, and the vast,
immeasurable possibilities of Christian sainthood.

5 '

T

IV
A Plea for the Priceless

~it might have been sold.— MARK xiv. 5.

HAT suggestion came from Judas. That was
all he could find to say about the precious
ointment poured forth from its alabaster vase in the
service of love. The Bethany circle had united to do
honour to Jesus. A meal was served in the house of
Simon the leper, possibly because his was the most
commodious house available. Look at the picture.
The Master in the place of honour. The disciples
near Him, Martha waiting at table, Lazarus looking
out on things with the light of his second life in his
eyes, Mary with the inner vision of a loving heart
reading in the Master's face a shadow of things to
come. A hush in the talking. Mary kneeling at the
Master's feet, the broken vase, the perfume floating
through the room. A silence in which love eternal
was trying to say something to each man's heart;
then, as is often the case in life, the first man to break
the silence was the man to whom the silence had said
nothing. ' It might have been sold/ — and we feel

A Plea for the Priceless

that vandal feet have trampled the vase and its
precious burden into the dust, and that the roar of
the market has swept into the sanctuary of one
worshipping, love-laden, life-laden moment. Judas
gazed with unseeing eyes upon one of those things so
central in the literature of the world, but so rare in
its life — a spontaneously dramatic scene. He mis
handled a beautiful situation. And his bad taste
does violence to our artistic sense. But, my friends,
we have to deal with something far more serious
than bad taste. It is very easy to overestimate the
value of taste. In all the higher civilization of the
world there is a tendency to allow good taste to atone
for bad character. Aesthetics — with its pseudo-
spirituality — usurps the moral authority of the judge
ment-seat of life. Refinement is substituted for
reformation, and among some people a polished sinner
gets more respect than an uncouth saint. These
people charge Judas with taking a business view of
the situation. But the real charge to be brought
against him is that he got no view of it at all. If he
sinned against art, it was not art as it is interpreted
by the aesthetic temperament, with its not seldom false
and uncatholic view of a workaday world, with its
profound conviction that a man who paints pictures
must be altogether superior to a man who makes
boots— it was against art as it stands for the unpur-

53

A Plea for the Priceless

chasable and imperishable and eternal — and that is the
fabric of man's true life. That little pale-faced mite
who stopped you in the street yesterday as you were
carrying home a bunch of flowers to your wife, and
said, ' Give me a flower/ was not a beggar. She was
an artist. It was her response to the vision beautiful.
Her plea for the priceless. It was a voice confessing
amid the rattle of the street that c man doth not live
by bread alone.'

Judas stood among the priceless things that day in
Simon's house, and the plea for them was stifled in
his soul. He was not, as a certain false aestheticism
would make him out to be, a worse man for keeping
the bag. Some one must keep it. But the pity of it
was that Judas had come to believe that the bag could
keep him. And that is the peril against which we
must be on our guard. Not specifically as business
men, for this is not essentially a peril of the market
place. Broadly stated, it is the danger of becoming
lost in the temporalities, earth-fed and earth-filled.
It is the danger of trying to express the whole of life
in terms that apply only to a very small part of it.
Commerce is just what men make it. The heart that
seeks first the kingdom of God and its righteousness,
the love that seeketh not its own, can make a man's
ledger a poem of honesty and charity worthy a place
among all beautiful things; but if he never gets beyond

54

A Plea for the Priceless

market values, if there is nothing of all that he loves
and lives for that he cannot ticket with a price, if he
knows much of what money can do and little of what
it cannot do, then he is blind in the house beautiful,
starved amid the bounty of the Lord.

Judas missed in Simon's house not a dramatic scene,
but an eternal truth. Only a shallow and unspiritual
judgement will think less of him for knowing the
selling-price of alabaster and nard. His sin lay in
that he had lost the power to see in these things a
sacrament of ' the life that is life indeed.' But it
would be an empty vindication of Judas to say that
his suggestion is ' true as far as it goes/ A thing has
to go a certain distance before it begins to be true.
It has to touch the spiritual and eternal in life, and
Judas missed that. And so this man, with his market
price and his mental arithmetic, was not an intruder
— he was an outsider. He was not inopportune,-he
was unspiritual. He was heartblind. The fact that
he priced the gift proves that he never saw it. To
have seen it was to have known it was priceless.

O these priceless things — how we miss them ! How
Jesus pleaded for them ! And Judas had companied
with that unworldly life, had heard the Master say
that Solomon in his state robes was not so well
dressed as a wild flower, and that the widow's half-
farthing was worth more than the jewels of the

55

A Plea for the Priceless

rich, and that the cup of cold water was worthy a
heavenly reward ; had heard the rich promises of the
kingdom pledged to the poor of the earth : and yet he
had not learned that there are things too beautiful to
be sold. All the best things are given away. Do we
realize what a ghost and travesty of possession lurks
in the act of purchase ? You can buy a book of
poems : the soft bindings are yours, the gilt edges are
yours, the handmade paper is yours, but not the
poetry. No man was ever rich enough to buy a poem.
If it is his, he must have it as the unpurchasable gift
of God to his soul. And as surely as you cannot buy
a poem, so you cannot buy a home, or a happy hour,
or a good conscience, or a rich hope. Trite old story,
yes, but we must go on telling it till the vital truth it
implies has fashioned the practices of the world. And
it can — for the positive side of this teaching is the
doctrine of grace. God's mercy for the undeserving,
His treasure for the poor, His fullness for the empty.
The wealth of our lives is the love that brings the
vision beautiful and welds men heart to heart, the
sympathy that gives insight, the faith and hope that
enrich the spirit, the morning joy of Jesus in the souls
of them that crown Him and the lives of them that
serve Him.

' It might have been sold.1

That is, I think, the most vulgar remark on record.
56

A Plea for the Priceless

How that wonder of love in Simon's house was
cheapened for the man from Iscarioth ! How the
shadow of a material judgement obscured for him the
spiritual dignity and glory of Mary's service ! Judas
did not know what he was dealing with. He may
have been an authority on spikenard. Perhaps he
could have told us the precise meaning of that strange
wor&pistikes, which St. Mark used to describe the oint
ment, and which bids fair to remain one of the minor
puzzles of his Gospel. But he was not dealing with
alabaster and spikenard. And, my friends, we never
are. Life is made up of things that defy all valua
tion by this world's standard — things the worth of
which can only be expressed in that mystic coinage
that is stamped with the image of One wearing a
crown of thorns, and has for its superscription, 'Ye
did it unto Me.'

And it is missing these things that degrades and
vulgarizes life. For some of you this service is a
brief pause in the day's work. You must be back at
your work at two o'clock. Yes, but what are you
going back to ? Back to sell so much of your time
and strength to your employer for a certain wage.
That is a life any man might well learn to despise.
But hear the plea for the priceless. Take that back
in your hearts. You can handle goods and earn
wages, but, O my brother ! there is more in the day's

57

A Plea for the Priceless

work than that. ' The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy,
peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness,
meekness, self-control. Against such there is no law '
— yes, and on such there is no price. They are the
rich gift of God to your soul, and you have the
ennobling right to give them to your brother, who
will never be rich enough to buy them at your hands.
Go back to your work with His Spirit in your hearts,
and, instead of being a wage-earner, you shall be a
dispenser of the means to live, and for you the leaden
shackles of earthly necessity shall be transmuted
into the golden freedom of love and truth, and
minted into the largesse of willing service.

' It might have been sold.'

We have heard a good deal recently about the
simple life. The one eternal authority on the simple
life said, ' A man's life consisteth not in the abund
ance of the things that he possesseth.' If the setting
of life is to be simple, the aim and content of life must
be spiritual. It is not primarily a matter of earthly
economies. It is not a matter of learning to live
within your income. That will not solve the problem.
It is the attempt to do that which is making the
problem. Multiply your income by anything you like
and still it will not keep you. The simplest thing
that goes to make life is beyond your income.

In the world of the heart no man can pay his way.

58

A Plea for the Priceless

The extravagance of the rich and the thriftlessness of
the poor are ultimately accounted for by blindness to
the priceless things. So, my friends, let us take this
dictum of Judas : this classic utterance of materialism,
and judge it by that life which Jesus has revealed to
us — the life that trusts the fatherhood of God and the
saviourhood of Jesus Christ and the fullness of the
Spirit ; that is lived by the faith that transfigures
duty, and the prayer that links life's poverty to God's
illimitable resources ; the life that loves mercy and
justice, and looks for the city of God beyond the
earthly need and the earthly nightfall, — and we shall
see the frightful falseness of the material estimate of
life, and shall become both prophets and exponents
of the sublime simplicity of living.

And now let us follow Judas from Simon's house
to the house of his Master's enemies. We must do
this. We cannot deal with the three hundred pence
and say nothing of the thirty pieces of silver, for they
are part of the same calculation. The blindness in
the house of Simon and the bargain with the chief
priests are parts of the same thing. The man who
cannot see the priceless is quite capable of selling it.
That is the logic of history. That is the tragedy of
materialism. This man sold his honour, his place in
the brotherhood, the great trust of his life, and the
very love of God. Men little think what impieties,

59

A Plea for the Priceless

treacheries, and shames lurk beneath the materialistic
appraisement of life. This is peculiarly a peril of the
city. Our brethren who till the soil and wait in field
and garden for God's sunshine and His rain have all
about them a sacrament of the priceless things. But
we who dwell amid so much that is artificial, so much
that is not easily suggestive of the unseen sources
and spiritual values of life, may perhaps think our
selves in special danger of judging earthly judgements.
But, after all, whether a man drive a ploughshare or
drive a bargain, there is but one way of escape from
the peril of the earthly view and the earthly valua
tion — a peril never far from the hearts of the children
of men. And that is in the evangel of the grace of
God. Art has fought in vain with the coarse and
stubborn materialism of the world. Aestheticism,
with its eclectic discipleship and its demand for a
measure of intellectual refinement, has never been
able to make the plea for the priceless a real factor
in the life of a workaday world. Only Christ can do
that. In His cross He has revealed life to us as the
priceless gift of God to every humble, lowly, penitent,
and obedient heart.

Nothing in my hand I bring,
Simply to Thy cross I cling.

If once a man has come empty-handed to the mercy

of God in Christ ; if day by day he stretches out

60

A Plea for the Priceless

these same empty hands to the Giver of life ; if his
heart has tasted of the fullness awaiting him beyond
the voices of the market and the pledges of the world
— then beauty and truth and love and all the
spiritual reality of life are his, and the basal plea for
the priceless is for ever wakened and answered in
his soul.

61

Miraculous Draught of Fishes

And Simon answering said unto Him, Master, we have toiled all
night, and have taken nothing; nevertheless at Thy command I will let
down the net. — LUKE v. 5.

I PURPOSE to treat this incident of the miraculous
draught of fishes in a more or less parabolic way.
We shall be standing by the Sea of Galilee, but we
shall be thinking and speaking of the sea of life.
We shall be watching a few fishermen coming ashore,
first with empty boats at dawn of day, and then
with boats laden almost beyond the point of safety
with a great catch of fish ; but behind the picture
I want us to find some of the inner meaning of
success and failure upon wider and more perplexing
waters.

But before we take up the parable let us be quite
sure that we have fast hold of the miracle. Since the
text is a miracle, and the sermon is going to be a
parable, a word of explanation is perhaps necessary.
At any rate, this kind of exegesis needs to be carefully

62

The Miraculous Draught of Fishes

safeguarded. One of the tendencies of modern
teaching is to take refuge in parables, because the
atmosphere just now is supposed to be trying to
miracles. There are so many self-appointed wonder-
slayers in the world. The latest St. George — a not
too attractive or inspiring figure be it said — has ridden
forth glittering from helmet to spear with a shining
preparation known as ' the new light ' to slay the
dragon of mystery. The mistake that he and his
followers make is this. They think mystery is some
thing that can be localized, tracked to its lair, and
finally encountered. They do not feel how inescapable
and intimate a thing is mystery. It is in the loom of
mystery that the thread of our life is spun. Mystery
is the very make of us. It is the atmosphere we
breathe. To slay the mystery of life a man would
have, soon or late, to slay himself. But until he has
some vision of the suicidal issue of his undertaking
the wonder-slayer puts all his heart into his work.
And one of his favourite expressions when he is deal
ing with this ineffably mysterious Book is the word
' parable.' He snatches this and that great Old
Testament or New Testament story out of our hands
and tears the historic framework out of it, and then
hands it back to us a nerveless and shapeless some
thing that he calls a parable. In the name of the new
light — a thing very reminiscent of ancient darkness — he

63

The Miraculous Draught of Fishes

confiscates the wonder, and majesty, and divinity of
some great scriptural scene, and then, with a generosity
that some of us entirely fail to appreciate, he says,
' There, I won't take it all ; you can keep the lesson.'
And I am afraid many people are disposed to try
to get along with that. There is a danger of our
being more conciliatory at times than the fundamental
principles of the divine revelation really justifies. We
are prone to say concerning the miracles in the story
of Jesus, ' Well, never mind whether or no it really
happened. There are some very beautiful lessons to
be learned from it. Let us learn the lessons, and leave
the miracle alone.' Now, as far as some incidents are
concerned, this might seem a profitable and pacific
way of using our New Testament ; but it involves
a profound mistake. It suggests that the real need
of the world is a few gracious, timely lessons. But
the failure of so many teachers — teachers with music
in their voices, sympathy in their hearts, and logic in
their minds — gives the lie to that suggestion. My
friends, the world's great need is not a lesson, it is a
miracle — the crowning, all-inclusive miracle of grace.
Jesus lifts us not as we call Him Rabbi, but as we
call Him God over all, blessed for ever. So we
must insist on the miracle. A man might find a
plausible explanation of a great haul of fish ; but
having explained that and a few other wonders, he

The Miraculous Draught of Fishes

has to explain an empty sepulchre ; and some — God
forgive them ! — have done that, with much talk about
credulity and the growth of legend, and have turned
their pledge of immortal victory into an outworn
romance born among a few credulous enthusiasts.

So as we take up a parable this morning, let us do
it with a full sense of the miracle within and behind
it — not necessarily a miracle of creation, but certainly
a miracle of knowledge. Let us assert the wonder of
the tale, not because we would pay some arbitrary or
orthodox tribute to the divinity of Jesus Christ, but
because these passion-haunted, sorrow-laden, storm-
driven lives of ours need a wonder, a supremacy, a
miracle of help, compared with which the swift filling
of two empty boats is but a simple thing. And now,
with a good conscience, to our parable.

' We have toiled all night, and have taken nothing/
That was not the first vain night by a good many
that they had spent on the Sea of Galilee. Mind you,
these men were no novices. They knew their busi
ness. They had known the Galilean Sea from their
boyhood — all its moods and tempers, its dangers and
its possibilities. The story of their bread-winning life
had been told upon its waters. They were experts,
and their boat was empty. They had worked hard
and worked wisely, and the sea had beaten them.
In spite of the instincts and love of a lifetime on
a 65

The Miraculous Draught of Fishes

its waters, it can send a man ashore with an empty
boat.

And on the greater sea where you and I do our
work the same story is ever being told. It is a diffi
cult story to understand. It is beyond us all. The
failure of the foolish, the incompetent and the lazy is
a foregone conclusion. But how often do we see the
wise, strong, earnest, capable souls coming from their
toils with nothing to show ! It is a piece of pitifully
false reasoning that would account for the seeming
vanity of effort by suggesting that the man who made
it was incompetent. Some of the best-equipped lives
the world has known have seemed to be associated
with failure rather than with success. For all of us
periods of unfruitful and unrewarded toil are only too
familiar. For the fisherman in the bay, for the toiler
among human souls, life holds something not for
tuitous, but incalculable. There is always the un
known quantity, always the equation we cannot solve.
It would seem that it is not the will of God that we
should in our toil for Him feel ourselves masters of
the situation. It must be enough to know that He is
Master of it. No Christian worker can say, ' My work
is there. I hold every thread of it in my hands.'

When I left college and went to my first charge,
in a Sussex village, I took, as became a probationer,
a lordly and spacious suite of rooms at the village

66

The Miraculous Draught of Fishes

wheelwright's. My window looked into his yard. I
could see him at work — and I sometimes envied him.
He could make a cart-wheel. He could finish it.
He could promise it for the day after to-morrow.
And I, I could not say for all my praying and preach
ing when these rough farm lads or that poor village
toper who always came to service on Sunday even
ing — and always sober, except once at a harvest
festival — would be fashioned unto God's high uses.
Soon or late we have to learn that maybe it is beyond
the range of our wisest reckonings that we read the
profoundest articles of our working creed. The sea
is His and He made it, and the spoils of land and
heart are in His keeping, and without Him we can do
nothing. Life is so fashioned that, whilst we can all
see the value and necessity of trying to become ex
perts, yet the hours teach us that more precious than
any skill of service we shall ever attain unto is the
simplicity of our faith and the depth of our patience.
Again, success and failure are deep and inward
things. No surface judgement ever truly appraises
them. The world reads failure in an empty boat. God
reads failure in an empty heart. ' We have toiled all
night, and have taken nothing.' Well, what of that ?
That is no tragedy if you can say, * We have toiled
all night, and have lost nothing.' This is where
you begin to see right into the heart of the worker's
£ 2 67

The Miraculous Draught of Fishes

failure — not the thing he did not win, but the thing
he did lose.

Hopelessness, indifference, weak despondency, fool
ish desperation, cynical unbelief, these are the things
that go to make real failure. It is not our ignorance
and clumsiness that baffle the Almighty — it is our
despair. When Peter put out into the night on the
former of the two ventures with which we are con
cerned, he had his skill, his experience, his calculations.
He had noted the hour and read the sky — and he
came back with an empty boat. The next time he
put forth, all these things had become secondary
matters. The simple, sufficient inspiration of his
second venture was the word of his Master. It is
evident from something that St. John says that this
was not Simon's first meeting with Jesus. Fresh
from His baptism in Jordan and His trial in the
wilderness, Jesus had met and talked with Simon,
and the seeds of a splendid faith were already germi
nating in the disciple's heart. ' Nevertheless at Thy
command I will let down the net.' I am afraid we
do not always get so far as that. ' We have toiled
all night, and have taken nothing.' Too often that is
our reply to the Master as He bids us launch out into
the deep — bids us hope, and believe, and endeavour.
We meet Him with a bit of barren experience. We
fling in His face the bitter cry of life's unfruitful

68

The Miraculous Draught of Fishes

hours — and for the response of faith we substitute the
misleading logic of an empty boat.

'We have toiled all night.' The night was the
right time for fishing. If they had had no success
then, what chance was there in the glare of the sun ?
Oh how we are snared in the traditions of our toil !
How we are limited by the little that we have had
time to justify ! How conventional and unenterprising
are these hearts of ours in the wide world of the
spirit ! Fancy putting to sea in the middle of the
morning ! Everything was against it, except the word
of the Master; but Simon came to know ere his life-
work was done that that is the most tremendous and
significant exception in all the world. We talk about
the exception that proves the rule. This is the excep
tion that transcends the rule — that shows the rule to
be, not as we supposed it a rigid law of life, but rather
part of the foolish bondage of our faithless and
timorous spirits. My friends, there is a danger lest
we should know better than to do the things that
would help us to succeed. There is a failure that
comes of putting experience before faith. Sometimes
we are too wise to succeed — worldly-wise. There is
one with whom the darkness and the light are both
alike, and ever His word avails in the lives of them
that are willing to receive it. God's word is never
inopportune. The commandment of Heaven always

69

The Miraculous Draught of Fishes

interprets the real and unseen possibilities of the
situation. Obedience is success. Therefore let us
have done with our poor little atheistic time-limits,
our prating of the probable and the seasonable, our
o'erweening respect for the almanac, and let us trust
the timeless wisdom of our God, whose voice is in our
hearts every day.

1 Launch out into the deep and let down your nets.'
That was simple enough. Just the old way — the
familiar means. That is a word for the novelty-
mongers and the sensationalists — the people who
believe in a creed of surprises, in salvation by aston
ishment, who would always be giving the world
something to stare at, a gospel of interesting bewilder
ment. Some of this way of thinking, when they get
tired of railing at the 'old teaching,' turn their atten
tion to the old building in which that teaching is
given. * A fig for your fine old sanctuary ! ' they say.
' You will never save a soul in this town till you build
a central hall.' In their less ambitious discontented
moments they concentrate on the pulpit and the choir.
' Down with that pulpit. The gospel that reaches the
people must be preached from a rostrum. And as
for the choir — well, the sweet singers in Israel need
drowning in the tumultuous waves of a vast orchestra.'
My friends, the workers in the Manchester Mission
know that I am not suggesting a breath of disapproval

70

The Miraculous Draught of Fishes

of the means used to reach the masses in our great
towns and cities. If I grew hoarse with denunciation
it would make no difference. The thing has justified
itself ten times over. The Church must speak to the
world in a way that will win a hearing and a response.
Let us have no cast-iron forms. Let us not be the
slaves of precedent. But I do say three things. To
all who prate contemptuously about the ' old teach
ing' I would say: Novelty is a lie. It is born of
shallowness. When you ask fora new gospel, you ask
for something that is not true. Penitence, and faith,
and prayer, and faithfulness, and the love that seeketh
not its own — these are the timeless things. To those
who have lost their faith in their own local sanctuary
whatever its architecture, I say, You never had any
business to be putting your working faith into bricks
and mortar. What you really need is not a central
hall, but a central faith. You are worshipping the
accidents of religion and unconsciously contemning
the essence of religion. You want a new boat, and
the latest thing in nets, and some patent bait — and
you cannot hear the voice of Christ bidding you
without another thought about boat and tackle,
launch out and let down your nets. And to all of
you, I say that in the story of Christian service history
repeats itself because it has nothing better to say,
We need more faith in the possibilities of routine.

7'

The Miraculous Draught of Fishes

We need to become interpreters of life's monotonies.
The path of the familiar, trodden with the voice of
Christ in a man's ears, has ever led on to the splendid
surprises of life. ' Launch out and let down your
nets.' Go out to your work in the world, the toils
that custom has staled and long familiarity has be
littled, and know that the beaten path of life skirts the
kingdom of the miraculous, and leads into the divine
wonderland, if only we hear ever afresh the call of
Christ.

Again, these men succeeded where they had failed.
The old sphere of their labours was the sphere of their
reward. Some people have but one suggestion to offer
when they have failed. It is this : ' We will try
somewhere else.' Because they have caught nothing
they conclude that there is nothing to catch. That is
often the logic of the self-inflated and the impatient ;
but in some way or other the thought comes to most of
us now and again. It is perhaps only natural that we
should dream of better work in a new field. We all
have to face some element of the uncongenial and the
adverse. We tire of the setting of our task. We
ministers, with whom the familiar thing is unfamiliarity
and the abiding thing is a constant moving on — well,
we get tired of that. We all need to know that the
one vital necessity of our lives is to be sought, not in
the setting, but in the spirit of them. Any boat will

72

The Miraculous Draught of Fishes

do if Christ bids you launch it. Any hour is a harvest
hour if Christ bids you let down the net.

Just one other thought. The men who succeeded
were the men who had failed. Failure is not a
standing disability in the service of the kingdom.
In the world it is sometimes a final disqualifica
tion, an unpardonable sin. The world says to the
failures, ' Stand aside and let some one else try.
You have had your chance. Now make room for
a better man.' He is always a better man, this
man who has not tried. The world is quite agree
able that the boat should be launched again, but
it stipulates for a different crew. And some are too
ready to accept the stipulation and drop out. I
wonder how many ministers last year received at
least one note from a steward, a leader, a Guild
secretary, containing the phrase, ' Let some one else
try.' Note the way of Jesus. ' Launch out/ you men
who but lately came ashore with empty nets. That is
Christ's way with the depressed worker. It may be
that here to-day some of us have a keen and humiliat
ing sense of the futility of some past days. It may be
that there is a sigh of despondency in our hearts, a
shadow of indifference upon our outlook. Our work
has taken a good deal out of us. No work is any good
that doesn't do that. The price of our best work is
heartache. But whilst the aching is at its worst and

73

The Miraculous Draught of Fishes

the bright end of endeavour is for a while out of sight,
we are tempted to think many foolish things — tempted
to discount the worth of it all, tempted to criticize
the conditions of our labour or to distrust the issue
of it.

My friends, I dare say we need many things, more
skill, strenuousness, patience ; but most of all we
need one thing — an ear tuned to catch through the
urgencies, difficulties, monotonies of life the voice
of the great Master of our souls and of our toils. We
need the faith folded in Simon's word, * Nevertheless
at Thy command.' Oh, if only we can go out into the
world to pit the command of Christ against our
weariness, our sense of difficulty, and (a harder thing
to do) against the reckonings of our experience and
the earthly probabilities, then, come what may, each
hour shall count for all it ought to count for, and the
end shall be the highest success of all, even the doing
of God's will.

74

VI
—The Synagogue and the House

When they were come out of the synagogue they came into the house.—
MARK i. 29.

THE synagogue and the house, the church and
the home, the sanctuary and the street, worship
and work, religion and daily life — these things have
ever a tendency to dwell apart in our thought and
vision. They each have a meaning for us, but so
often these meanings clash. They seem to gather
round different things and to lead in opposite directions.
And our failure to bring these things together — the
spiritual distance that so often lies between the syna
gogue and the house — accounts for all our other failure
to harmonize and understand the manifold experiences
of life. It is very difficult for us to realize the unity
of life. We think that we miss seeing it because of
the endless and bewildering diversity of human ex
perience, because life is so broken up, because the
hours seem to contradict each other and the vital
sequences of events are so often hidden from us.

75

The Synagogue and the House

But the true explanation of our inability to unify
life lies not in the fact that human experience is
thousandfold, but in the fact that it is twofold. Caper
naum has gone, and the earth has long since drawn
its veil of green over the site of the synagogue where
Jesus sat and taught, and of the cottage where dwelt
Simon the fisherman ; but the synagogue and the
house stood for things upon which the years can leave
no obliterating dust. They stood for life's most
difficult antithesis, for its most profound and crucial
paradox. They remind us that heaven and earth are
ever calling to our hearts, ever laying hands upon
our lives. They teach us that the real battle of life
for us all has to be fought out, not between this hour
and the next, but between every hour and the life
everlasting. They symbolize the needs of the soul
and the needs of the body : the two communions that
together fulfil life for every man, fellowship with
God and fellowship with humanity. And so I want
us just now to watch Simon and Andrew, James and
John, with Jesus in their midst, making their way
through the narrow, crooked streets of a little fishing-
town from the synagogue on the hill to a cottage
on the shore. And I want us to learn as we watch
them something about the oneness of life in Jesus
Christ.

Jesus had but recently called these four to follow

The Synagogue and the House

Him. What authority and what tenderness, what
power of appeal and suasion there was in that voice
we can but dimly imagine. We know this much at
least, that it won these fishermen from their boats
and their nets, and from -that Galilean sea whose
moods and music were woven into their very lives.
They had left all to follow Christ. And it has ever
been so. To hear amid the murmur of the world's
busy life the pleading of the Eternal Love, and to go
forth to answer that call without one regretful gaze
upon boats, and nets, and a sunlit sea — this is the
first great step towards understanding life and towards
finding out that the synagogue and the house are one,
and that there may be a profound unity and harmony
in all the changing hours. The preface to the true
philosophy of our own history is one word, and that
word is ' obedience.' If life is to have but one meaning
it must have but one master : and that Master must be
Jesus Christ.

Jesus took His four followers into the synagogue.
They had never been present at such a service in all
their lives. They knew the synagogue and its service
passing well. They had been taken there as boys
by their respective fathers, Jonas and Zebedee ; and
maybe they had not seldom been hard put to it, not
only in those early days, but in more recent times, to
keep some semblance of interest in the niggling and

77

The Synagogue and the House

perfunctory homily, full of distinctions without differ
ences, and the glorification of trifles. But that day
the Preacher gripped their souls. Deep springs of joy
were loosened in their hearts. Such a large, generous,
fearless utterance had never before been heard in the
synagogue at Capernaum. Law and tradition and
ritualism had been preached there for years, and many
a weary, wintry time the poor folk had had. But
that day a new Preacher had come to Capernaum,
and the Preacher's name was Love. And whenever
Love preaches, life cannot help listening. Yes, and
a poor helpless life was saved that Sabbath morning.
The quiet of the service was broken by the cry of a
man with an unclean spirit : a most unorthodox pro
ceeding in the light of a more recent evangelistic
tradition. There ought to be something to help that
man whenever we gather together in public worship.
I am afraid some of us forget him. I am afraid we
are inclined to assume he is not there. But in the
light of a clearer vision of God, a humbler gaze into
the face of the sinless Christ, may he not be myself,
yourself? Some thread of penitence is woven into
all true worship. It will be a sad day when the
Christian Church forgets — or when any company oi
people within its wide borders forgets — that the cry
of the man with an unclean spirit has ever been the
birth-cry of a new and living worship.

The Synagogue and the House

When Jesus went forth to preach, Judaism had
become a religion without vision and enthusiasm,
without heroism and moral passion, without sym
pathy, and so without a message that could get home
to the heart of a poor devil-mastered man. Then
Jesus came — and the same synagogue could not hold
Christ and the devil, and never a stir in the atmo
sphere. And that remains true when the last word
has been said about the psychology of conversion and
the subtleties of the modern temperament. I quite
believe that a just recognition of the various intel
lectual and temperamental changes that take place in
the common mind and life of men makes for the true
furtherance of the gospel. By all means let us ac
knowledge that we to-day are less introspective, less
subjective, in some ways less emotional than our
forebears ; but all these and kindred considerations do
not make us less sinful, nor must we let them chal
lenge or obscure the simple and direct message of
divine grace. Perhaps we have heard enough for a
while about the things that change. We must re
assure and reconvince ourselves of the things that
change not — the all-mastering Christ and the sin-laden
soul. Modernity is becoming almost a fetish with
us. People clamour for an up-to-date gospel. Why,
the very plea is a belittling of the gospel ! It is the
glory and genius of the gospel that it makes nothing

79

The Synagogue and the House

of dates. It is a timeless and eternal power. And it
is the power that matters.

Perhaps it is only fair to say a word to those who
make a fetish of the bygone. There are some who
read that verse, ' And the unclean spirit, tearing
him and crying with a loud voice, came out of him,'
and they refuse to believe that man can find spiritual
freedom without being nearly torn to pieces in the
finding of it. They cannot believe in a miracle unless
they see a disturbance : and, alas, some of them think
that having made a disturbance they have worked
a miracle. My friends, it matters little what way
the unclean spirit goes out of a man's life, but it
matters everything that it does go. It matters
everything that you and I so pray and believe and
worship before God that every man's sin shall cry
out within him and be driven forth — and that
utterly.

But we must not stay any longer in the synagogue
at Capernaum. Let us follow Jesus and His four
disciples out again, down the straggling street through
the Sabbath sunshine, beneath a cottage doorway.
There was a fever-stricken woman in the house. And
they tell Him of her. And He took her by the hand
and the fever left her. The miracle in the synagogue
was followed by the miracle in the house. The
cottage on the shore became as wonderful a place as

80

The Synagogue and the House

the temple on the hill. And the lesson of it all is
the oneness of life in Jesus Christ

' When they were come out of the synagogue.' That
is just where the difficulty of life comes in for most
of us. These four fishermen stood that morning in
the place of worship, and the word of Him who spake
as never man spake carried them out beyond the fret
and triviality, the weariness and sorrow of their lives.
But had they gone down alone to their cottage with
the fishing-nets drying in the sun, a too familiar sacra
ment of their hard and perilous struggle for a living,
and with the feeble voice of a sick woman unconsciously
taking up the tale of the sorrow and frailty of life, they
might have felt, as many do feel, that it is a long way
from the synagogue to the house. Worship and
work might have seemed to them to be in two different
worlds. The mercy of the altar might have seemed
to have little to do with the sorrow of the hearth.

But Jesus went with them. He had come to teach
men the way from the synagogue to the house. The
path of His life lay through them both. In Him
the gulf between them was for ever bridged and the
difference in their final significance for ever blotted
out. It is Jesus Christ who has delivered religion
from the tyranny of place and time and form. The
faith of human hearts has always tended to make too
much of places. We trust too easily to some high
v 81

The Synagogue and the House

and reverent circumstance, and accept too weakly the
dictation of some sad or difficult situation. We have
our here and our there. I suppose the local always
comes before the universal. The only way to the
everywhere lies through the somewhere. Doubtless
centuries of pious pilgrimage to Gerizim and to
Jerusalem did something to prepare men for that
great word that at once defined and universalized the
place of worship : ' Believe Me, the hour cometh, when
neither in this mountain, nor in Jerusalem, shall ye
worship the Father.' There has to be a synagogue ;
but the value of it for every man who enters it has
always been its nearness and its likeness to the house.
The value of religion lies not in its contrast with daily
life, but in its communion with daily life. Jesus has
made worship something better than a beautiful thing
to be with difficulty recalled to help us in life's
unlovely places.

We talk about coming to God's house and getting
away from the moil and pain of things. And that is
part of the value of worship. It does bring, at times,
a sense of escape. It does record great hours of the
soul. But, better still, it teaches us by the grace of an
abiding divine fellowship that the prosaism and un-
loveliness of life are but the fictions of our blind and
unresponsive spirits. We have worshipped as we
should when it is easier, and not harder, for us to go

82

The Synagogue and the House

forth and answer the call of life. The synagogue is
not the place where a man forgets his work : it is the
place where he learns what his work is, and how he
best may do it. And, as for sorrow — well, if God lets us
forget our sorrow for an hour, it is that we may better
understand it when we meet it again, and better bear
it for a lifetime. A charming book, a sweet singer
will help you to outsoar life; but you finish the last
chapter, the last quivering note dies away, and lo ! you
are still on the wrong side of all life's deepest difficulty.
There is a difference between getting up and getting
on. There is no profit in being taken out of ourselves,
unless we be taken out of ourselves for all and for ever
by the strong uplift and unslackening clasp of the
Christ who died to save us from all we ought not to
be, and liveth to make us all we ought to be, and
whose mercy and grace avail in all their fullness for
every moment of our lives.

That Sabbath morning in old Capernaum, Jesus
made it quite clear why they had a synagogue, a
thing that both they who ministered and they who
worshipped had forgotten. Capernaum had a syna
gogue because it had that house where a fever-stricken
woman lay weak and restless, and many another house
where there were little children and sick folk, and the
aged, and anxious mothers and toil-wearied bread
winners. Years of formalism and literalism, and the
F 2 83

The Synagogue and the House

gradual substitution of a political for a spiritual outlook,
had loosened the bond between the synagogue and the
house. It meant little to the perplexed and burdened
folk of that busy town that at the turnings of the
streets and from the open spaces they could catch a
glimpse of the House of Help upon the hill. But, had
they but known it, those sad-eyed folk, those sheep
without a shepherd, there passed through their streets
that day, from the house of prayer to the house of
pain, One whose presence in the world meant that
never again should religion and daily life stand un
related or drift apart. He came to make them one ;
to weave all that is richest in the one into all that
is neediest in the other; to make the synagogue a
sacrament of help, and the cottage a place of peace,
and both part of the great presence-chamber of God's
eternal mercy.

' When they were come out of the synagogue they
came into the house.' These words stand for life's
common and oft-repeated experience. Every day in
some wise we have this passage from the synagogue
to the house, from the hour of refreshment to the hour
of toil, from the place where help is found to the
place where help is needed. We have to go forth from
our too brief opportunities for devotion, from the Book,
from some gracious meditation or some pure and up
lifting companionship, from some hour that has at

84

The Synagogue and the House

least made a simple virtue grow great and noble
before our inward eye and stand forth in all its king-
liness ; and we have to strive after that same virtue
amid relationships and tasks and aspects of life that
conspire to reduce that glorious thing to the level of
an unavailing commonplace. We have to turn from
the poetry to the prose, from the glory to the drudg
ery, from the fair ideal to the gloomy actual, from the
vision of the glamorous distance to the question of
the next step. How we fail, what we lose, what we
overlook, what we betray in this continuous conflict
between the best and all that seems other and less than
the best, probably makes a sad story. And nothing
can redeem that story but a clear experience of the
oneness of life in Jesus Christ. So searching was His
gaze upon life, so profound His sympathy, so catholic
His wisdom and love, that for Him life knew no
transitions from the higher to the lower, no merely
occasional sanctities, no mere secularities. Life was
not for Him, as it is too often for us, a thing of shreds
and patches, a medley of events, a string of experi
ences that sometimes brought Him the fragrance of
the altar and sometimes the dust of the street. Life
for Him was one high obedience, one immortal
sacrifice, one solemn, joyous passion of love.

And what life was to Him, He is able to make it to
us. Just across the threshold of the sanctuary, just

85

The Synagogue and the House

outside this one hour of quiet, life is waiting for us all.
In a few moments we shall be back in it. What does
it mean for you ? It means that temptation written
in your temperament, that truth so hard to speak, that
silence so difficult to keep, a wayward child difficult
to train, a fretful invalid hard to live with, a froward
master, a disappointing servant, — in short for each of
us a life-task all too easily misunderstood and mis
handled. As we bide here in this hour of worship we
call all this ' the other side of life.' Jesus can make
it as truly a part of life at its highest and noblest as
in some raptured and exalted hour. The Christ of
the synagogue is the Christ of the house. What He
is to you here, He will be to you there. Life is one
in Him — unbroken in meaning, beauty, and worth.
Through the straggling narrow stress of life we may
pass with His companionship in our hearts, as the four
passed through the little town of Capernaum long
ago. And ever for us, as for them, the promise and
power of the synagogue shall work themselves out,
prove themselves true over and over again in all the
need and burden of the house.

86

VII
Mistaken Suppositions

AN EASTER SERMON

_ Supposing Him to be the gardener. — JOHN xx. 15.

They supposed that they had seen a spirit. — LUKE xxiv. 37.

WHEN Mary Magdalene stood in Joseph's gar
den on the morning of the Resurrection with
embalming spices in her hands and with the tragedy
of hopeless love playing itself out in her aching heart,
she made a mistake. She mistook the Risen Saviour
for the Arimathean's gardener. The mistake is easily
explained. The light was still dim. There was just
the first faint flush of the dawn, that magical decep
tive light, revealing an almost amorphous world. And
had the light been better — well, there were tears in
the woman's eyes. Yes, and the mistake admits of a
somewhat deeper explanation than this.

We see most easily what we are looking for. Ex
pectation is almost part of the power of vision. Mary
wanted some one to tell her what had become of the
body of Jesus. She wanted some information con
cerning the empty tomb. She did not exactly want

87

Mistaken Suppositions

an explanation. She had explained the situation
already. ' They have taken away my Lord, and
I know not where they have laid Him.' They had
laid Him somewhere. She must not abandon her
quest of the still, white form. The last tender offices
must be fulfilled. And when a figure loomed in the
uncertain light, she came to the simple and likely
conclusion that it was Joseph's gardener. Surely
here was the very man to tell her what she most
wanted to know. ' Sir, if thou hast borne Him hence,
tell me where thou hast laid Him, and I will take
Him away.' Then the figure spoke her name, and in
a moment she knew — first of all human souls to know
it — that Christ was risen from the dead, and that the
hope of the world was splendid, eternal truth.

Now look at another scene. It was the evening
of that same day. The darkness had fallen. The
disciples were gathered in a house in some narrow
street of old Jerusalem. The door was barred with
the utmost care. The shutters were closed. Not a
gleam of light to attract the notice of a passer-by.
For the temper of the Jews was uncertain, and there
were not wanting tokens that boded no good to the
disciples of the Nazarene. Once already that evening
a tremor had passed through that little company.
They had heard a careful, stealthy, and yet urgent
knocking at the door. It turned out to be two of their

88

Mistaken Suppositions

band who earlier in the day had set out to walk to
Emmaus. They had a strange tale to tell of One
who had joined them on their walk, though, now they
came to think of it, they could not say whether He met
them or overtook them. They told how His words
had made their heart warm with glowing thoughts and
burning hopes, of how He had consented to share their
evening meal at the little inn at Emmaus, and then —
oh the wonder of it ! — as the Stranger was blessing
and breaking the bread a veil seemed to be taken
from before their eyes, and for a few brief moments
they saw He was their Master. They saw where the
thorns had torn His brow and the nails had pierced
His hands — and lo ! they two were alone, gazing upon
the broken bread, and pondering the burning words.
And whilst this story was being told a presence was
suddenly manifest to all that listening company. One
stood among them whom they had all known and
whom they still loved. But in a flash they thought
of that final tragedy on Calvary. Death was final,
and He had died. They thought, too, of the door so
certainly and securely locked, of the windows so
firmly barred. And terror seized their spirits. They
supposed that they saw a ghost — something unreal,
unearthly, a thing of mystery and dread. Till the
voice that had revealed the simple truth to the Mag
dalene in the dawn spoke to them : * Why are ye

Mistaken Suppositions

troubled ? ' and their hearts caught the glorious truth
that Christ was risen.

Putting these two incidents side by side, I can see
a picture of the twofold difficulty of that new life
that Christ came to reveal. I can see, as in a parable,
the two ways in which we fail to gather and use the
great revelation that Jesus makes to us. We make
the mistake that the Magdalene made. We love an
easy, earthly explanation of life. We live too often
under the dominion of this world's narrow probabili
ties. We are content, nay, even resolved, that our
thought shall move within the cramped limits of our
experience. We pass unmoved, unenlightened through
some hour that might have been a great hour of the
soul, because, for us, life is pre-judged. We are so
foolishly sure as to what is most likely to happen. We
are so blindly unready for the miracle, so stolidly
unprepared for the wonder, the vision, the glory, the
message, of the life that is life indeed. We trust
only our senses, our instincts, our habits of thought,
our powers of judgement, the dictates of earthly
experience. How often we sum up a situation, we
explain an event, when all the while the real facts of
the case have lain outside the range of our observa
tion ! An explanation may be perfectly reasonable
and quite wrong. What more reasonable than to
suppose that that figure in the garden was the gar-
go

Mistaken Suppositions

dener ? Who else was likely to be there at that early
hour? Who else was likely to have any right or
business there ? The sanity, the likeliness of Mary's
conclusion were beyond criticism. But she was
wrong. She was tremendously and profoundly
wrong. And her mistake teaches us that the truth
as it is in Jesus may give the lie to all time-born
probabilities. It may contradict earth's narrow, hour-
long likelihood. The empty sepulchre is not an
isolated marvel. It is not just a splendid, lonely
mystery, challenging for evermore the mind that must
still live on in a world wholly governed by laws that
are traceable and wholly made up of situations that
admit of being reasoned out.

That empty sepulchre has filled the round world
with mystery. It has enlarged beyond the range of
our reason the possibilities of human life. It has run
the line of wonder through all the hours. It has made
faith and love and worship and spiritual obedience
chief factors in each day's reckonings.

Now we know that the simplest facts of life, its toils
and its leisure, its wayside greetings, its laughter and
its tears are beyond our earthly understanding. We
can so easily misinterpret them, so habitually mis
handle them. They ask of us a faith that shall
reveal the wondrous presence and sovereign will of
Christ our Saviour.

Mistaken Suppositions

In the earthliness of our minds we suppose so many
shallow and foolish things. We suppose it was an
accident ; we suppose it was a failure ; we suppose it
made no difference ; we suppose it was just a business
transaction, a greeting, a disappointment; we suppose
it was just the gift of a friend, sympathy of a neigh
bour, the music of a song, the word of a book ; we
suppose it was just a thought the sunset brought us,
a sickness from which we recovered — thanks to the
doctor — the sweet prattle of a little child. Thus we
move in the dim light of the garden and see only the
gardener. Thus we ask our questions, follow our
plans, do our work, and bear our sorrow, unconscious
of that Divine Saviour whose presence and power
and love fill all things.

Let us look for a few moments at what happened
on the evening of the first day of the week.
The mistake that the disciples made in the even
ing was just the opposite of the mistake that
the Magdalene had made in the dawn. She had
stumbled over the likely and the familiar : they
stumbled over the unlikely and the strange. She had
found an explanation that was simple and reasonable
and by no means disconcerting. They found an ex
planation that was irrational, disquieting, and remote
from the facts and laws of life. To her, Christ was the
gardener about to begin his day's work : to them He

92

Mistaken Suppositions

was an inexplicable and dreadful apparition, a ghostly
presence from the place of silence and shadows, flinging
about their souls the garment of nameless fear. Mary
did not go far enough in her explanation of the figure
in the garden. She stopped short at the bidding of
her habit of thought. She accepted too easily the
verdict of sense and judgement. The disciples in
their explanation of the figure that appeared among
them went too far. They passed beyowd the range
of all that to them had ever been real and intelligible.
They saw only a ghostly visitant, an abstraction, a
terrifying mystery. Can we find in that stupefied and
fear-stricken company a lesson we need to learn ? Is
it not the reality of the unseen world, the real existence,
the immediate and practical significance of the things
of the spirit ? We lock the door, we bar the windows
of the house of life. We shelter ourselves amid the
securities and fellowships of earth. But in spite of
every bolt and bar He comes. Conscience beholds
a vision of judgement. The sinful soul has vision of
the hands its sins have pierced. The human heart
in its weariness and longing beholds the outstretched
arms of divine pity, and the pain-marred face of
Eternal Love. But all the earthliness within us rises
to cast doubt on the reality and worth of that vision. We
bid this busy outward life belittle such experience.
We sometimes treat the deepest thoughts that ever

93

Mistaken Suppositions

come to us as mere ghosts of the mind ; the most vital
and momentous moods as mere tricks of feeling. We
are afraid of silence, of loneliness, of meditation, of the
profundities of worship ; of the hour of the hushed
thought, the listening heart. We shrink from the
tremendous, the sacred and eternal realities of the
spirit. We spread the fan of a light shallow realism
that we may waft away, as so many gruesome and
meaningless ghosts, the thoughts and visions that
come to us from the home of all reality. Our fear
of the tremendous spiritual realities is not always
manifest. It is often well concealed. But beneath
many a specious argument, many a robust determina
tion, many a plunge into what men call practical
things, there lurks, as the hidden motive, the fear of
coming face to face with the true eternal world of the
spirit.

It was the same figure that Mary mistook for the
gardener and that the disciples mistook for a dread
apparition. It was the same living, loving Saviour of
human souls. In Jesus the two worlds meet. In
Him the earthly and the heavenly are reconciled.
That new life that we are called to live through faith
in Him can make the familiar things of life flash out
with wondrous divine beauty and meaning, and can
make the deep and awesome solemnities of the
spiritual world brighten with gracious hopes and

94

Mistaken Suppositions

comforting promises. For him who gives heart and
life into Christ's keeping each well-conned, drudgery-
garbed duty rises to its height and worth in the
kingdom of righteousness, and through the dim
mysterious thoughts of destiny and eternity that
shadow the soul we can see the tender face and
outstretched hands of perfect love.

Just one other thought. To the Magdalene who
had mistaken Him for the gardener Jesus said,
1 Touch Me not.' To the disciples who had mistaken
Him for a ghostly visitant, an unreality, Jesus said,
' Handle Me and see — for a spirit hath not flesh and
bones as ye behold Me having.'

On the Magdalene Jesus laid a new law of reverence,
on the disciples a new law of familiarity. And does
not the Risen Christ this day lay those laws upon us ?
Sometimes we handle life with too much familiarity.
We hold our tasks, our opportunities, our privileges,
and our hopes with an almost irreverent assurance.
So soon for us the glory of life fades into the light of
common day. So indifferently the privileges of life
come to be handled. We can even tread the path of
prayer without awe, and certainly we often face the
work and fellowship of life as things of small account.
And in so far as it is so with us the Risen Christ says
to us, as to the over-eager Magdalene, 'Touch Me
not.'

95

.

Mistaken Suppositions

Mary thought that things were just as they had
been before. She did not realize the tremendous
spiritual meaning of the Resurrection. She did not
realize that now Christ's bodily presence was but a
sacrament of His abiding spiritual presence in all
believing hearts. She would have been content to
have kissed the Master's feet. But that was to be too
easily satisfied. She had to apprehend Him and to
love Him in a higher and a holier way. So would
Jesus give us each to pass through life with a new
diffidence, a new reverence, a new and holy vision of
all familiar things.

And sometimes we do not get near enough to life.
We dare not come at close grips with the splendid
hopes and the noble visions God in His mercy sends
to our struggling souls. They are vague, remote,
uncomforting. And when it is so with us, then comes
that other word, spoken to the trembling, vision-
haunted disciples, ' Handle Me and see.' Put each
great thought, each dazzling hope, each wondrous
vision to the test here in the maze and sorrow of the
years, here in the press of human things. And that
same fellowship with Christ that has made each
passing duty a thing of immortal worth shall make
the vast eternal truth of God a thing of immediate
comfort.

VIII

A New Year Sermon

I must also see Rome. — ACTS xix. 21.
For to me to live is Christ. — PHIL. i. 21.

• T MUST also see Rome.' That was no passing
J- desire on the part of St. Paul. Those five words
sum up one of the great persistent hopes of the
apostle's heart. In his letter to the Christian Church
in Rome we find this phrase, ' Having these many
years a longing to come unto you.' The presence
and growth of such a desire as this is easily accounted
for. St. Paul was a Roman citizen, at a time when
the Roman empire was the greatest power in the
earth and Rome was the capital of the world. Few
things were of more practical service to St. Paul than
his Roman citizenship. He travelled far and wide,
often by those grand straight roads that the Romans
had a genius for making ; and wherever in his travels
he met a representative of the imperial city, the
citizen Paul knew that he was likely to find that rough
and yet in many respects satisfactory justice which
was the secret of Rome's power and the salt of her
G 97

A New Year Sermon

life. Rome ruled her world with a strong grip and a
magnificent energy. And doubtless St. Paul, more
than once, had reason to be glad that this was so.

True, Rome failed this freeborn son of hers some
times. She chastised and imprisoned this her greatest
citizen. In the end she put him to death. But the
fact still remains that St. Paul's citizenship stood him
in good stead as he went about preaching and teaching
throughout that great empire. Providence sometimes
came to him in the form of a Roman officer, and he
may well have felt that he would like to see the
capital from which this availing justice radiated
so far.

But there were other and weightier reasons why
St. Paul's heart went out to Rome. His experience had
taught him the wisdom of getting to the great centres
of Roman life and rule. With his intense zeal for the
spread of the gospel, with his keen eye for life's most
true and spacious opportunities, with his splendid
courage that faced simply and gladly the perils of
the faith, the apostle felt that if only he could gain a
foothold in the metropolis of the world, if only he
could touch the heart of the empire, he would have
handled the largest opportunity for service that ever
man held. He had heard much, too, of the Christian
community in Rome as he sat and toiled in the
workshop of Aquila, and year by year the desire to

A New Year Sermon

preach there grew upon him. And year by year it
was denied him. Ephesus in pro-consular Asia,
Athens and Corinth across the Aegean, witnessed his
abundant labours. He traversed the country from
Syria to Macedonia. He could say in that Roman
letter from which I have already quoted, ' So that from
Jerusalem round about unto Illyricum I have fully
preached the gospel of Christ.' But Rome was the
dream of his life. And the years of splendid patience
and heroic toil rolled on, and the man's hair turned
grey, and maybe he thought that the call to the City
of the Seven Hills would never come. But it did.
And oh, the pathos of it ! He entered the city a
prisoner in charge of a centurion. He dwelt there
two years before he was tried and evidently acquitted
of the charges against him. Then after two or three
years of liberty, Rome seized him again. This time
her temper had changed. St. Paul was held in a
closer captivity, very likely denied a glimpse of the
blue sky, till the heedless cruelty of Nero sent this
brave soldier of Christ to the glorious shame of
martyrdom. That was how St. Paul saw Rome.
And here and now, on the threshold of the year, I
want to help you to bring the desire of your life to
the judgement of this noble story.

Every life has its secret hope, its hidden desire.
Our work lies, so to speak, in the provinces of life, but
02 99

A New Year Sermon

our heart often goes out to the capital. Life is not
fully expressed for any of us in the routine of our
service. It is not measured by the inch-tape of ex
perience. It is larger than these things. It has room
for the unrealized. And if we should be very frank
with ourselves and each other, we should confess that
one of the inspirations and comforts of life for us,
especially as we most feel the limitation and difficulty
and irksomeness and prosaism of it, is the whisper to
our own heart, ' I must also see Rome.' And the
first thing I want you to let St. Paul teach you is this,
that only the religion of Jesus Christ can make your
dream of Rome worth dreaming. ' I must also see
Rome ' : my friend, what do you mean by that ? Some
people's Rome is not very far away, not very difficult
to reach, and not worth the pilgrimage. Rome was the
city of a thousand pleasures, where life could become
a whirl of new sensations, and the hours were full of
colour and sound and change. Rome was the world's
great market-place : its streets, like the streets of all
the world's great cities, were paved with gold — for
the men who had never trodden them. Rome was
the place where a man stood the best chance of honour
and office, of promotion and reward. And it was the
immensely wealthy and sometimes lavish patron of
art and poetry and literature. To the man with a
drab experience, or an empty purse, or a disappointed

100

A New Year Sermon

ambition, or a bundle of poems, the solution of life
lay in the words, 'I must see Rome.' If the city
of your dreams is a city of gaiety or of wealth or of
purely personal selfish advancement, then the secret
desire of your life is riot worthy the heart that
holds it.

But you may say, ' Surely as long as I do my duty
nothing else matters. My time, and my strength,
and my resources may belong to others, but my
dreams are my own.' That is a very common fiction
of the mind, a conception of life that too often is
made to justify empty, idle speculation, unfounded
forecast of the future that breeds unfaithfulness in the
present. It is true that your dreams are your own :
and it is just because they are your own, woven of the
very texture of your mind, vitalized by the inner
spirit of your life, that they matter so much. A dream
is a radical, creative, germinal thing. It does not
float as a pleasing nimbus beyond the range and
reckonings of our daily activities. It lies at the core
of them. It is true that if you do your duty, nothing
else matters ; but that is because everything in your
life, your dream and desire, your affection and hope,
your aim and your character all go to the doing of
your duty. We make the mistake of trying to isolate
some things in our lives. We cannot do this. Life
is one. We cannot dream for ourselves and live for

101

A New Year Sermon

others. We cannot give the world some of our hopes
and give God all our service. St. Paul's dream of Rome
was bound to have some effect on all that he said and
did. And the reason why it did not cloud his outlook
or impair his service is found in those few words in
his Philippian letter that give us a glimpse of the
very innermost of his soul — ' For me to live is Christ.'
It is true that our ideal has a great deal to do with
our conduct, and just as true that our conduct reacts
on our ideal ; but there is something in the Christian
religion so deep that by comparison both these con
siderations seem to be but on the surface of things.
Christianity's great offer to the world is not a splendid
ideal, neither is it a perfect ethic ; it is a cleansed
heart, an inspired will, a sure and certain hope, a new
life. To understand how St. Paul entered Rome you
must remember how Saul of Tarsus entered Damascus.
* Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou Me ? ' The eternal
love of Christ broke this man's heart, and all his
selfishness was slain, and all his masterful wilfulness
was transmuted into tender, willing obedience, There
after one face shone through his dreams, one voice
spake in his duties ; it was the face and voice of
the Saviour of the world. When once a man gives
himself thus to Jesus Christ everything in his life,
from his farthest dream to his nearest duty, rights
itself.

102

A New Year Sermon

See how it was with St. Paul. The thought of
Rome never made him indifferent to the claims of
Ephesus or Lystra or many another place where he
stayed and toiled. His longing to see Rome was
eclipsed by his longing to see the kingdom of God
coming ; even as God willed it should come. He hid
this hope in his heart, but he never tried to force the
fulfilment of it in his life. He knew that the best
place for a man is where God puts him. The vision
of Rome sometimes makes men impatient and slovenly
in their work. The hope for to-morrow obscures the
beautiful and noble duty of to-day. Only Christ can
teach us to sacrifice at the altar of patience. Only
He can give us that which more than anything else
we should desire for ourselves, that is, the willingness
to do the will of God here and now. In the Christian
life the highest desires keep us faithful to the lowliest
duties, and in that faithfulness lies the work of all
our days. As you look at St. Paul's life you can
learn that a man fails not when his hope is unfulfilled,
but when his work is undone. Look at the apostle,
passing along the Appian Way and beneath the
shadow of the splendid Porta Capena — at last in the
city of his desire. He was an old man ; the tale of
his years was nearly told, and the night when no man
can work was already casting its long grey shadows
on his path. But what of that ? His desire had long

103

A New Year Sermon

been refused him, but his work had been done. He
had never relinquished his dream., but he had never
neglected his duty. God had given him to live a life
of incomparable value and superb success ere ever his
eyes sighted the city that had so often captured his
imagination and stimulated his desire.

The best possibilities of our lives are perhaps bound
up in our dreams, but they are set free in our deeds.
They come to us in God's will for our daily life, and
finding that is finding them. Obedience is success.
If St. Paul had fought for his heart's desire we dare
not think of how tragic and miserable the result
would have been. And God honoured His servant's
submission by giving him to live a life that in the
matter of service has no parallel. We cannot aim too
high ; but we must have the right standard of measure
ment. We must know that no man can find anything
higher than the will of God for him here and now ; and
doing that, and rising hour by hour to that, he shall
come to know that one day in the place where God
has put him is worth a lifetime in the city of his
dreams.

A word or two about the way St. Paul reached
Rome. He came there a prisoner. And never
were chains more suggestive than those he wore.
They speak to us of the way the great opportunities
of life come to men. To find the freedom of life's

104

A New Year Sermon

large and abundant fulfilment a man must become the
prisoner of the Lord. The highest service has ever
been given, not to those who have clutched at a crown,
but to those who have been willing to wear fetters.
Between each of us and the best we hope to be and
do, there lies much submission and much renunciation.
Never forget that.

There are a great many disappointed and embittered
people in the world — people who are looking
back and wondering whether life has been worth
while. So much failure and emptiness, so many
thwarted endeavours, so many frustrated hours ; and
the Rome of their heart's desire farther away than
ever it was. Yes, and there are some rich men,
famous men, successful men, who have entered the
Rome of their youthful dreams to find that there is
no joy in its honours, no wisdom in its books, no wealth
in its markets, and no peace in its streets. And all
of them, the disappointed who have never found the
city, and the disenchanted who, passing beneath its
gate have found it a city of mean streets, have made
the same mistake — the mistake from which only
Christ can save us. They have forgotten that the
law of success is the law of sacrifice ; that though
desire may often be far off, duty is ever near ; that the
only life in the end unanswered is the life that is daily
unfaithful ; and that the only way any man comes to

A New Year Sermon

his own is by living for others. Many a young man
in the glamour of his morning time, many a general
in the flush of his successful campaign, passed through
the gates of Rome ; but the joy they found and the
fame they won are forgotten. But still the world
remembers one who after years of selfless toil passed
beneath the Porta Capena with this thought in his
heart and the fruit of it in his life, ' for me to live is
Christ/

Yea, thro' life, death, thro' sorrow and thro' sinning
He shall suffice me, for He hath sufficed ;
Christ is the end, for Christ was the beginning :
Christ the beginning, for the end is Christ.

Live to Him in this New Year and in all the years,
and for you there shall be no conflict between your
fairest dream and your most urgent and uninviting
task.

106

IX
-The Open Window

Now his windows were open in his chamber towards Jerusalem. —
DAN. vi. 10.

IT is not easy to know where to begin the story
of this man whose windows were open towards
Jerusalem. Those open windows are so eloquent.
They have such a tale to tell. It is a beautiful, brave,
pathetic story, worthy its place in this Book that
records the purest heroisms, and the most lustrous
fidelities, and the holiest patiences of history.

Those open windows were on the western frontage
of one of the largest houses in Babylon. The man
who occupied it stood next to the king in authority
and influence. He was one of three presidents who
shared between them the highest official dignity of
the Assyrian empire, and already it was whispered
in the city that the king had a mind to set him still
higher, giving him honour and power beyond the
other two.

Now when you remember that the palmy days of
107

The Open Window

the Babylonian rule were not yet passed away, and
remember, too, what mighty architects and artists
these Assyrians were, it is easy to believe that
Babylon's Downing Street was a street of palaces, and
that this man we are going to talk about was grandly
housed. The suite of rooms he used was on the
west front, and the room which we should call his
living-room, and which as a child I always thought
of as his bedroom, always had its lattices thrown
open. ' Well/ you say, ' and what of that ? He
loved the sunshine and the fresh air, and the view
across the Euphrates valley, like many another man
in Babylon.' I think he did : but that does not tell
the true story of these open windows. The man who
looked out through them was a Jew, away from the
land of his people and the temple of his God. There
was all the pathos of exile in that far gaze. Babylon
could never be to this man what Jerusalem must ever
be. It had given to him those things that are much
to many men and all to some — place, power, and
learning, but it was not rich enough to give him a
home. He loved the meanest street in the city of
his people better than all the stately palaces of
Babylon. He never lost the sense of strangeness in
that heathen capital. It could not minister to the
few elemental needs of his life. And when he felt
most keenly the loneliness of his exile, he did not

1 08

The Open Window

seek the busy thoroughfares of the city, nor the glitter
ing distinctions of the court ; he went to his house
and looked out of some western window, and said to
himself, ' Somewhere beyond those hills there lies
Jerusalem.' It was five hundred miles away as the
crow flies, but it was nearer to him than Babylon
lying at his feet ; for, after all, my friends, near and
far, are not measured by miles. They are to be
reckoned according to the linear measure of love.
There is a mensuration of the heart.

This thought brings us to the timelessness of the
history. It is the heart's story, fresh as the morning
light. Do not men call the world Babylon, and do
they not speak of another city — the new Jerusalem,
and say

My treasure and my heart are there?

If that is so, is there such a thing as the home
sickness of the soul ? I am afraid that the thoughts
that the phrase suggests are not so wholesome and
dignified as one would wish them to be. This home
sickness is a grand thing if you have really got it.
The visions of the seers, and the patiences of the
saints, and the lonely toils of the faithful, are bound
up with it. But sometimes the world hears a man
singing —

109

The Open Window

I'm but a stranger here :
Heaven is my home.

And it nudges its neighbour, and says, ' He seems
to have settled down very comfortably for a stranger.'
It is convinced that some of these 'strangers here'
are in a fair way of becoming naturalized. And so
they are. They are like those Jews who had such a
flourishing time in Babylon that they lost all desire
to see Jerusalem again. Their success in the market
killed their patriotism. Mind that your success
doesn't kill yours !

There is a sure way to tell whether it is still alive
in your heart. To every man to whom the heavenly
city is more than a name and the immediate presence
of God is more than a phrase, there come times when
the busy world about him seems unsatisfying, and
he knows himself one with them of old, ' who con
fessed that they were strangers on the earth.' Then
he must needs get him to life's western window, and
look out across the low-lying hills of time and circum
stance, and say to his own heart, ' Somewhere beyond
those hills there is my soul's native land, my abiding
city, my Father's face.'

Those are not vain hours that a man spends at the
open lattice of his heavenly hope. See what the
open window did for Daniel. In the city of a thou
sand spurious divinities, it reminded him of a temple

no

The Open Window

erected for the worship of the One God. In the city
full of fascinating lures and shameless enticements, it
brought home to his heart every day the sweet, stern
morality of the Hebrew ethical ideal.

The breath from that open window kept his life
clean. But for it he might have been drawn into
the dark current of Babylonian sensuality and
sinfulness. He might have become unwilling, un
worthy, unable to utter in the ears of Babylon the
words of his God. But the open window taught him
that Babylon was a terrible place. He saw a sinister
shadow in its smiles, he heard the whisper of danger
in its plaudits ; and three times a day he knelt with
his face towards the holy city, and his heart going
out unto his God : never too busy or tired for that.

My friends, we who live in Babylon cannot afford
to spend all our time in its streets amid the traffic
and the merchandise, the gains and the greetings, the
weariness and the sin. If life's western window is
never opened ; if the breath from the hills of God plays
in vain around its closed and dust-laden lattice; if
morning, noon, and night the vision is the vision of
Babylon and the voice is the voice of Babylon, then is
the seal of the city set ever more broadly upon a man's
forehead and its delusions and its passions make their
home in his heart. We say that God is everywhere.
But we cannot find Him everywhere if we do not find

in

The Open Window

Him somewhere. He is near us in the babel of buy
ing and selling, in the toil for bread, in the rush of
life. But they who find Him thus in the thick of the
world are they who have first found Him waiting for
them, as He waited for one of old, at the window
that looks towards Jerusalem, to send them forth into
the day's life with the temple reverence and the
temple ideal impressed afresh upon their spirit. And
when the day is over, and Babylon has done its worst,
they find Him there again waiting to sweep the last
jangling echoes of the city right out of their hearts
— that as they lie down to rest their last thought
shall be laden with the peace of that other city —
Jerusalem beyond the hills.

But to return to Daniel. He proved himself stronger
than Babylon. That was because he could see
beyond Babylon. The men who conquer the world
are the men who see beyond the world. Babylon
published an interdict, and it meant for Daniel no
communion at his western lattice for thirty days :
thirty prayerless days ! That was what the interdict
said ; and after it had been signed and sealed by
Darius, it was unalterable. The Medes and Persians
prided themselves on never going back on anything
they had decreed. Babylon had challenged Jerusalem.
It had pitted its powers against the powers of the God
of Daniel. ' And when Daniel knew that the writing

112

The Open Window

was signed, he went into his house (now his windows
were open in his chamber toward Jerusalem) and he
kneeled upon his knees three times a day, and gave
thanks before his God as he did aforetime.' So much
for the law of the Medes and Persians. No, not that.
So much for the law of the open window, and the
reverent heart, and the soul's faithfulness. Babylon
had a law that altered not. So had Daniel. He was
not a Babylonian. He lived under the law of another
city, and he obeyed that law, and it cast him into a
den of lions, and it brought him out again and made
him a splendid witness for God. My friends, history
tells us that, whenever the heavenly unalterable and
the earthly unalterable have met, one has always had
to alter, and it has not been the heavenly one.

Those satraps said to Daniel, ' If we find you on your
knees after this, we will be the death of you.' And
they had it all down in black and white. They were
backed UJD by something that was never known to give
way. Antl they found him on his knees after that,
and they were not the death of him ! That ought to
put heart into us. Instead of Babylon, read Manches
ter or London ; there is no essential difference. Instead
of the law of the Medes and Persians, read the law of
the force of circumstances. And now, all you want is
some one who will accept the exhortation of a familiar
hymn, and ''dare to be a Daniel.' The world is

H 113

The Open Window

saying to men in this city of ours, ' If you are abso
lutely honest, I'll starve you. If you will not obey the
law of self-interest, I will wreck your prospects. If
you are bent on succeeding as a saint, you shall
fail in everything else ' (as if there were anything
else ! ).

But all this has a terrible side. It is a very serious
matter. If a man for conscience' sake, for Christ's sake,
defies the world, there seems to be nothing for it but
the den of lions. That appears to be the issue ; but
it is not. Whenever the world throws a man to the
lions, he always falls into the hands of the living God.
And whatever happens, he is safe there.

Just see exactly what happened in the case of
Daniel. The satraps laid their plans, and developed
their conspiracy, and passed their anti-prayer law, and
placarded the city with their impious instructions, and
spied on Daniel and found him going his own way — or,
shall we say, praying his own prayers ? — and they tried
him and proved the case to the hilt, and cast him into
the den of lions, and then God muzzled the lions.
Babylon was never more surprised in all its life. It
was somewhat of an authority on lions. It had always
believed that a lion, especially when judiciously starved,
is a very fierce and dangerous animal. It had to learn
that a lion is just what God lets him be. When at
last Daniel was lowered into the lions' den in the

114

The Open Window

evening, just about feeding time, Babylon said, ' That's
settled.' And so it was. God settled it. And as far
as Daniel was concerned, these lions had no teeth
and no claws. They could not raise a growl between
them.

And that is happening in every city. To more
than one doggedly righteous man in this city the
world has said, ' Turn aside, or I will fling you to a
fierce lion, and his name is Poverty.' And it has
flung him there — as any man may see ; but he knows
that God has said to poverty, ' Thou shalt not bite.'
The world has a whole den of lions, whose names are
scorn, hate, shame, and loss. And God can say to
them all — ' Ye shall not tear : ye shall be harmless.'
And He says it. The world cannot breed a lion that
God cannot tame.

So I commend to you this story of a good man,
as a parable of the godly life in an ungodly world.
It has been the wonder of the world that many a
simple man and many a frail woman has faced its
most terrible threats with a strangely joyous peace-
light in the eyes. My brother and my sister, you can
face the world like that. It is the light of the western
window. If you look out of that window you will
not be afraid to look into the den of lions — no, nor
even to spend a dark night there. Keep your heart
open to God and the light of the divine ideal, and let
H 8 115

The Open Window

neither the shadow of Babylon's favour nor of Baby
lon's fierceness come between you and the Holy City ;
and God shall bring you out of this great Babylon
unharmed, giving always a great peace, and whenever
you need it a great deliverance.

Hearing for Others

Go fhou near, and hear all that the Lord our God shall say : and speak
thou unto us all that the Lord our God shall speak unto thee ; and -we
will hear it, and do *'/.*— DEUT. v. 27.

O thou near, and hear for us.' That is an old
and still abiding plea. It is born of an old and
still abiding necessity. It has been the cry of the
human heart in all ages in its endeavours to find God
and worship Him and learn His will. As we look at
Moses standing in the lurid shadow of the mountain
that might not be touched, standing and listening in
the place of thunder — whilst the people waited afar
off not daring to draw nigh, we can see, if we will,
not an incident of ancient history about which
certain critical minds can grow brilliantly sceptical,
but a great fact, too deeply grounded in human
experience for any wise soul to doubt it. I mean
the ever personal and persistent need for mediation.
The real value of history lies not in the nicety with
which it records incidents but in the plainness and

117

Hearing for Others

force with which it makes the deeds of men exhibit
the principles that go to the making or unmaking of
the world. Right through the world's religious
history we see a long line of lofty souls who have
been called to read great saving truths among
shadows into which their brethren dare not pass,
and to hear some clear plain word of guidance amid
the reverberations of wrath and disaster. And if we
should be shown, as we are shown, the picture of a
people forgetting their own need of the very word
they asked for, forgetting the faith and courage of
their leader waiting for that word amid the shadows
and the thunders, and celebrating the feast of the
golden calf, sitting down to eat and drink and rising
up to play, this also is twice-told history. Moses is
not the only man who has come down from the
mount of yearning prayer and unselfish vigil for the
souls of men to find, instead of a hungry, humble
silence, the revelry of them that feast. And the
prophet has always known that the hour of penitence
and silence and fear would come again upon the
people, and they would listen to his message.

But for full and final proof of the world's need of
mediated truth and grace we do not look back along
the line of its leaders and its teachers, its priests and
prophets. We see One who through shadows darker
than even Sinai knew, the shadows of the garden and

118

Hearing for Others

the Cross, drew near unto God, passed for our sakes
into that fathomless mystery where justice and love
are one, and heard for us, and has told us, for our
deep and everlasting comfort, all that He heard.
Jesus is God's final answer to the long pleading of the
world, * Go near, and hear what the Lord our God shall
say : and speak unto us ; and we will hear it, and do it.'
But there is another and a different, but yet a very
real, sense in which truth is still mediated. God
speaks to men through men. We are in this world,
all resonant with His voice, to hear not only for our
selves but also for other people. Now hearing for
other people suggests a task which some find by no
means unpleasant or difficult, indeed a task to which
they address themselves with enthusiasm and delight.
1 Hearing for other people ' sometimes means dodging
the truth with a fervent hope that it will hit some
one else. It means becoming an expert in so receiv
ing the shafts of rebuke or warning coming straight
for your own conscience that they glance harmlessly
aside and bury themselves in your neighbour's
conscience. It is the subtle art of misapplication.
And it is essentially unprofitable. The gains thereof
are a heart of pride and a starved soul. There is not
one of us but can ill afford to miss one of those life-
enriching pains God sends to teachable and listening
souls.

119

Hearing for Others

What boots it that a man has seen the shame his
brother ought to feel, if to see it he himself has
turned his back on the everlasting joy and fathomless
wisdom of humility and refused the priceless treasure
of a broken and a contrite heart ?

But there is a way of hearing for other people that
is wholly meet and right, and that plays a necessary
part in the religious education of the race. Think
for a moment of music. It is a mediated treasure.
There are a few great names, and we call them the
masters. I think we might call them the listeners.
They heard for duller ears the choral harmony that
is wherever God is. Did the great poets fashion their
poems out of their own vibrant and sensitive souls ?
If we could ask them I think they would say ' No, we
heard these things.' The musician and the poet have
been men with ears to hear. The music of the
Messiah was waiting for Handel, the message of
the hills and vales of Cumberland was waiting for
Wordsworth. And through them he may hear who
will.

Now it is just possible that some of you are saying,
' This is a sermon for geniuses/ I should be the last
to suggest that even if it were it would be out of
place here. We preachers are often told that we
never know whom we have got in our congregations.
But as a matter of fact I have merely been casting

120

Hearing for Others

round for an outstanding and easily grasped illustra
tion of a law of revelation that is by no means confined
to these very obvious examples of it. This work of
hearing for others is part of the life-task of every
man who lives to God. ' Go near, and hear all that
the Lord our God shall say.' Whenever a man
does that, he hears something for his brother as well
as for himself. There is an inherent unselfishness
in divinity. There is a diffusiveness in every divine
message. In this matter of the word of the Lord
spoken to the soul, no man liveth to himself. In
the measure that any life attains unto sainthood it
becomes part of God's revelation of Himself to the
world. But you may say, ' Where is the need of such
a revelation. If every man can hear for himself, what
need that he should hear through another?' Why,
the need is here. Every man can, and indeed must,
draw near to the place of hearing ; but every man does
not hear the same thing when he gets there. The
voice is the same, but the message is strained through
a man's own ears. It is interpreted by each man's
experience. There are words that can best be heard
amid the murmur of busy life — words heard only of
such as sit in the still places of pain. Sorrow hears
for gladness, and gladness for sorrow. Wealth hears
for poverty, and poverty for wealth. The old man
hears for the young man, and the young man hears

121

Hearing for Others

for the old man. Every type of temperament and
gift and need and experience finds its place in bring
ing God's meanings home to the heart of the world.
His word is written in all godly lives. Mind you, I
say, 'godly' lives. Ungodliness never gets near
enough to the truth to hear anything worth repeating.
It is insignificant and meaningless and messageless.
But to the pure and the reverent and the spiritually-
minded, Heaven ever grants an audience. ( Go thou
near, and hear what the Lord shall speak to us.' That
is the privilege and obligation of sanctity.

And it means a different thing in each man's life.
The approach is in principle the same for us all, but
each comes back with a different message. The
wealth of the world lies in men's individuality.
Religion takes hold of all the subtle points of differ
ence in our lives — differences of equipment, of stand
point, of experience — and uses them to make more
clear to our brethren the great common truths
whereby the soul lives. If all men saw alike, no man
would see clearly.

Most people consider originality a very desirable
thing. Strange to say, however, people often think
that the short cut to originality is found by copying
some one else. The attempt to be original invariably
defeats itself. Yet originality is a very precious
thing. It is worth a great deal to the world. And

122

Hearing for Others

the one thing that truly develops and safeguards it
in human life is the worshipping and the listening
spirit. The most original man is the most devout
man. The freshest thing any man can give to the
world — the one thing the world can never have un
less he does give it — is the word of God spoken in
his own soul— the transcript of his personal experi
ence of divinity. The hardest task a man can have
in this world is to find himself. Indeed no man can
make that all-important discovery unless God guides
him to it.

We are often reminded that we are creatures of
habhX That is good. Habit is the framework of
character. But it is sadly possible for a man to be
the creature of other men's habits. We all pay an
unconscious toll to the great conventions in the midst
of which we live out our lives. It is so difficult to
live out your own life. But in so far as our desire
for originality is born of this imperative sense of the
duty of living out our own life from the inmost and
unto the uttermost, it is a desire worthy of being
cherished ; and nowhere more so than in the great
matter of religion. William Watson, in a searching
criticism of a certain section of society, describes
them as having ' minds to one dead likeness blent.'
You will not misunderstand me if I find in that
description a warning to the members of the noblest

123

Hearing for Others

society on earth — the Christian Church. I know
there may be minds to one living likeness blent. It
is much to us that we have so much in common.
Faith shared is faith stablished. But we all owe
something more to our brother than to hear with him.
We must also hear for him. In this continuous
communion of believing souls we ought to be richer —
and we are — not only by the grace of sympathy, but
by that thing in each of us that is first of all ours
alone because we are each listening for ourselves to
what God has to say to us.

And the word that is given to a man thus is an
authoritative word. The children of Israel said to
Moses, Tell us what God shall say to you ; and we
will hear it, and do it. How did they know it would
be God's word he would bring back to them, since
they would not be present at that awful communion ?
Whence this readiness of theirs to obey a word not
yet spoken ? My friends, they knew that in this
matter deception was impossible. A man can fashion
many deceits, but he cannot speak God's word until
he has heard it. It does not take a spiritual expert
to detect a sham divinity. There is an instinct in the
human heart that can always tell how far a word has
travelled. Men can always tell whether your life
message is an echo of the temporalities — a word
picked up in the valley of time — or whether it has

124

Hearing for Others

come through your hearts listening to the voice of the
Eternal. There is so much book-writing and speech-
making nowadays that one sometimes thinks a day
may come when the few distinguished people will
be those who have indulged themselves in neither
direction. One wonders whether there is not too
much talking. Perhaps the truth lies rather in this,
that there is not enough listening. The world soon
wearies of talk. There are healthy signs of revolt
against mere theory-mongers and dealers in irrespon
sible hearsay. There is a growing appetite for living
truth. There is one voice of which the world will
never tire, and it is the voice of the Christian ex
perience. Still it says tacitly, if not explicitly, ' Speak
unto us all that God shall speak unto thee ; and we
will hear it, and do it/ The time will never come
when simple, life-deep godliness cannot get a hearing.
And just a word about the order. Hear, and then
speak. Do not try to reverse it or you will become
one of the great company of babblers. Many of you
know that one of the dominant notes in modern life is
not so much unbelief as uncertainty. For years past
we have been gathering knowledge faster than we can
arrange it. The spirit of readjustment is upon us.
A great many good souls hardly know what they
believe. Do not, I beseech you, be anxious to add
your little bit of private speculation to the common

125

Hearing for Others

fund of doubt. That fund just now is in a very
flourishing condition. Go near and hear what the
Lord your God shall say, and you shall have a message
to deliver by the living out of your own life : a message
some one needs, to which some one will listen, and by
which some one shall win the grace of a quiet heart.

126

XI
The Lord's Song in a Strange Land

How shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land? — Ps. cxxxvii. 4.

WHEN you watch religion at work, you find a
morality ; when you converse with religion in
its thoughtful moods, you find a theology ; but when
ever you get to the heart of religion you find a song
Now that is not another way of saying that if your
conduct is right and your creed is right, then you will
be happy. Morality may be as cold as ice, and
theology may be as dry as dust. But religion stands
for something deep and vital : something of which
our best deeds are but shadows and our largest creed
is but a broken and stammering story. It comes up
from the depths of a heart that God has reached and
touched, that seeks to reach and touch Him again.
The great hymns of the Church come nearer than
anything else to uttering the last deep secret of the
religious life. They do not contain the raptures of
the Christian experience so much as the profundities
of the Christian faith. And by that I do not mean that

127

The Lord's Song in a Strange Land

they are theological. As a matter of fact they are ;
but a hymn is not theology indulging in a poetic
flight. Theology does not approve of such flights.
It is not capable of them. It never wrote a hymn, and
it never made any one want to sing a hymn — except
by way of relief — the hymn being not the outcome of
the situation, but rather something brought in to
save it. Some people regard our Methodist Hymn-
book with vast satisfaction because they find so much
good theology in our hymns. But you have not said
the best that can be said about a hymn when you
have lauded its theology. For a hymn takes up the
tale of truth at a point nearer its source than ever
theology can come, and carries the tale on beyond the
point at w^iich theology lays it down. The song of
the Church is born of all that is ineffable in its creed,
instinctive in its convictions, vital in its morality,
basal in its spiritual experience. If the Church is the
Bride of Christ, the hymn-book is its love-story.

And now look at that band of captives sitting
listlessly by the waters of Babylon, folded in all the
pathos of a thwarted destiny and a broken dream.
' How shall we sing the song of Zion ? ' They
might have recited the creed of Zion. They might
have borne testimony to the faith of Zion. But to
sing the Lord's song* to sing out the glory of their
history and destiny, to set the great notes of the

128

The Lord's Song in a Strange Land

Hebrew faith ringing in alien ears — was for a while too
much for them. They broke down, and hung their
harps on the willows.

And surely here the story touches our lives. The
bitter cry of these few Jewish patriots has ever been the
cry of the worshipping heart, with its ideal, its aspira
tion, its yearning and its duty, as it has sojourned in
the strange land, under the dynasty of world-powers,
the autocracy of selfishness, the tyranny of temptation,
and the imperialism of pain. There is no good man,
no man who seeks unto God, who cannot enter in
somewise into this story of the song unsung. The
song of the heavenly city has always been hard to
sing amid the shadows of the earthly exile. But the
difficulty proves that the song is there. I think per
haps some people forget that, or doubt it. They think
they have parted with their song in the hour when
they cannot set it to music. But it is not the song
they have laid aside, it is only the harp. We have
seen that the song of the Church is not born of ecstasy
but of profundity. It dwells amid the deep things
that lie at the foundations of faith and that feed the
roots of character.

Look again at the Jews, with their harps on the wil
lows. That picture tells you just how much and how
little Babylon can do. It can take the harp out of a
man's hands, but it cannot pluck the song of the Lord
i 129

The Lord's Song in a Strange Land

out of his heart. You can see in that group of griev
ing folk the outward and visible sign, not of Babylon's
triumph, but of its defeat. It tells of a loyalty that
that great city could not shake, a dream of home it
could not banish, a song of the heart's deep things,
that neither the music of its temples nor the roar of
its streets could make men forget. My friends, it
may be that our very depressions are precious to God.
It may be that He can teach us to take heart of hope
out of our very sense of the difficulty and pain of the
soul's true life. It may be that the burdened silences
of earnest hearts, like rests in music, have their rightful
place in the song we sing to Him here. Side by side
with this word about the harps on the willows and the
voices choked with tears set this word — ' When the
Lord turned again the captivity of Zion, then was
our mouth filled with laughter, and our tongue with
singing.' Israel had never sung like that before ; but
where had they learned to sing like that ? Why, in
the only place where a man can learn to sing the
Lord's song as it should be sung — in the strange land.
The Jews brought back from Babylon not only the
memory of a bitter captivity but the art of a sweeter
song. One of our latest poets has said, ' The half of
music, I have heard men say, is to have grieved.'
There is a more or less popular refrain that goes thus —
' I feel like singing all the time.' Now if that refrain

130

The Lord's Song in a Strange Land

sums up a man's experience, whatever he is (and I
won't attempt to place him lest I should do him an
injustice) he is not a singer and never was a singer
and does not know what singing is. William Watson,
in a lovely poem to the skylark, says —

My heart is dashed with griefs and fears ;

My song comes fluttering and is gone.
O, high above the home of tears,

Eternal joy, sing on !

A bird's song may be learned above the home of
tears, but not a saint's song. We have to learn to
sing by not being able to sing. Sorrow is the saints'
singing-master — the large unselfish sorrow of a heart
loyal to God amid the harsh and alien tongues of
the world's wickedness and all the strangeness of
the land.

Ah, but, you say, the question we started with was
not, ' How can we learn the Lord's song in a strange
land ? ' but ' How can we sing it there ? ' My friends,
there is a sense in which the learning and the singing
are one. The Lord's song is not first of all the song of
the man who feels happy ; it is the song of the man
who does right. We have seen how deep the song
goes. It is our first duty to be true to the depths of
it. Look at these Jewish exiles again. How did
they find an answer to their own question? They
t • 131

The Lord's Song in a Strange Land

hung their harps on the willows, but their obedience
was unto God. Every Jew who kept his hands clean
and his heart hopeful in that unholy and masterful
capital sang the Lord's song. If it did not fall on
Babylon's ears it rang in Babylon's conscience. When
Daniel made his choice between unfaithfulness and
life or faithfulness and death ; and when three young
princes stood upright and strong, in the flush of
their youth, and the power of their faith, amid the
crowd that bowed itself on the plain of Dura, refusing
to betray their lives' most precious trust and to
dishonour the God of their fathers, and their God —
the Lord's song went up to heaven from the land
of strangers. It is the song of moral victory, and of
utter faithfulness to God's voice in the soul. That is
not the only note in the song. But if that note be
missing there is no song.

And that is one of the notes that is threatened to
day — the great note of moral freedom. Vachell says
in one of his books : ' A bird in the hand never
sings.' The inner life of so many people to-day is
like a bird in the hand, and the hand is the hand of
fatalism. Side by side with that great movement, in
the main towards liberty, that is associated with the
word 'democracy,' there has gone on for the last
fifty years another movement that has made men
doubt the highest forms of the very liberty they have

The Lord's Song in a Strange Land

fought for. The gospel of environment has been
preached. Science has upheld the monarchy of law,
and materialistic philosophy has wrongly construed
that monarchy in the terms of the tyranny of circum
stance. It has said that the land is the sole maker of
them that dwell in it. It has taken the Master's
question, * Which of you by being anxious can add
one cubit unto his stature?' and has deduced from it,
not a faith in Almighty God, but a complete capitu
lation to Giant Circumstance. Now there is at the
heart of religion a flaming denial of that suggestion.
And I say that to fling down the gauntlet at the feet
of the modern determinism that is doing so much just
now to weaken for men the springs of action and to
discount for them the value of moral effort, to prove
through every hour of your own life that the captive
of circumstance is the free man of the Lord — this
is to set the note of the Lord's song floating through
the streets of the city, and to put new life into some
struggling and despairing souls.

But there is another side to this question about the
Lord's song and the singing of it that must not be
overlooked. In what sense is the Lord's song the
song of happiness ? There are a great many religious
people in the world to-day who are not really happy.
The causes of their want of happiness may be very
diverse, but probably it is due in many cases to the

The Lord's Song in a Strange Land

false idea of the function of happiness. c Be good
and you will be happy,' is an exhortation that is not
true for any man till he has forgotten it, and not always
true even then. If a man looks on happiness as a
sort of lawful interest that ought to be coming in to
him from his investments of fidelity and sacrifice he
is making a great mistake. The desire to be happy
frustrates itself. Happiness as a test of character, or
even as a test of religious sincerity, is best ruled out
of our reckonings. It is only calculated to cloud our
inner life and enfeeble our moral endeavour. And
we may get wrong in the great harmony of life by
being too anxious about the melody. But if a man
should succeed in doing this, the question of happiness
faces him again when he looks into his brother's eyes.
He may not seek it for its own sake, but he cannot help
seeking it for the world's sake and his work's sake.

Do we not feel that we owe it to the world to
be happy ? When we are told that we ought to go
about with bright faces and be beams of sunshine,
do we not feel that there is something sound and
vital in that demand ? When we read these lines of
Robert Louis Stevenson —

If I have faltered more or less
In my great task of happiness,
If I have moved among my race
And shown no glorious morning face,

134

The Lord's Song in a Strange Land

do we not feel that part of our personal failure in the
service of God is being probed ? True happiness is
the most persuasive herald the gospel can send forth
into the world. The creed that will win the day in
the end will be the creed that can be sung. We must
learn to set it to the music of joy.

A strange sadness has come over modern religious
life. Probably the spirit of sadness that has crept
into our music, and also, though in a less degree, into
our literature, has tinged our religious thought. But
I think that much of it is due to the fact that in
emphasizing the ethical issues of the Christian faith
we have almost unconsciously linked our joys too
closely with our duties, instead of looking straight up
to God. The Lord's song has become a song of
defiance hurled at the world, instead of a song of
faith for the ear of Heaven. The true music of the
Lord's song rings not in the hearts of the morally
desperate, but in the hearts of the spiritually exultant.
The true joy of the Christian is not that of a servant
working for the love of his work ; it is the joy of a son
working for love of his Father. It is not the joy of a
fighter with his back to the wall ; it is the joy of a
fighter with his face to the skies. Joy is not the child
of obligation fulfilled ; it is the child of affection and
aspiration satisfied. I quoted Watson's line just now—
O, high above the home of tears.
135

The Lord's Song in a Strange Land

After all, that is where the true joy of life dwells for
us all. And to reach up to that we need something
more than the sure hands of faithfulness — we need
the strong wings of faith. The song that comes out
of service is much ; but oh for the song of the Lord
out of which service comes !

I believe that if a census were taken to discover the
five most popular hymns to-day, among the five you
would find, * Lead, kindly light ; amid the encircling
gloom.' I confess to a weakness for that hymn
myself. But if the early Methodist fathers had had
that hymn, they would have never given it out. This
is what they sang ! —

My God, I am Thine !

What a comfort divine !
What a blessing to know that my Jesus is mine !

In the heavenly Lamb

Thrice happy I am,
And my heart it doth dance at the sound of His name.

That was not the product of a temperament,
neither was it the effervescence of an evangelical
revival. That has been the true joy-note through all
the ages, I do not know whether we shall ever come
back to that hymn of Charles Wesley's ; but we shall
have to come back to the experience if ever hillside
and city are to ring with the song of the Lord.

I do not say the song is not sung now. It is ; but
136

The Lord's Song in a Strange Land

it has been transposed. It is sung in four flats
instead of five sharps. And when you change the
key of a song you change the message of the song.
Let us never forget that the authentic song of the
Lord throbs with joy. And it is not when a man
has tried to do his best down here, but when faith
and hope have lifted him and all his travail and
success and weariness and failure right up to God's
eternal power and love, that he can sing that song.

Then, to turn for a third time to the poet's lines to
the singing bird, and venturing this time to alter
them, a man can sing —

My heart is dashed with griefs and fears,
My song comes fluttering and is gone ;
Yet here, within this home of tears,
Eternal joy, sing on !

137

XII

Twilight and Trembling

The twilight that I desired hath been turned into trembling unto me,
—ISA. xxi. 4 (R.V.).

YOU all know that the twilight is a great wizard.
I do not know whether you have ever thought
to analyse its subtle power. If you have, I think you
will have found that the spell of the twilight lies quite
as much in what it hides from us as in what it reveals.
It casts a filmy veil of indistinctness over all things
we see — softening their hardness, dealing gently with
their defects, making such beauty as they possess
more suggestive and idealistic.

The twilight hour is the one merciful hour in the
day — the hour when there is just enough light to see
by, but when criticism has to be suspended. This
hour, one feels, is in the beautiful fitness of things.
There is a sense in which the whole span of our
human life is but the twilight hour that ushers in the
bright eternal day. God has set a merciful limit to
our seeing. Part of that limitation is in our spiritual

Twilight and Trembling

constitution, part is in our circumstances. Just as
there is an automatic contraction of the pupil of the
eye so as to admit only just so much light as the
exquisite mechanism of sight can effectively and safely
deal with, so there is also a similar law of limitation
that concerns the inward eye. We see as much as
our minds can grapple with and our hearts can bear.
One somehow feels that if only one could see now as
one will see some day, life would appear at once more
beautiful and more unsightly than ever one has yet
conceived it to be. We have never seen life as
gracious and noble and fair as it really is ; but, on the
other hand, we have never seen it as sordid and twisted
and deformed as it really is. If the twilight hour of
our mortality fails to show us the splendour of life's
best beauty, it is equally reticent about its worst
deformity. If it seems to cheat us out of some of our
enjoyment of the fair things, it spares us the pain of
realizing the full measure of earthly defect. Amid
the miseries of imperfect life there is the mercy of
imperfect vision. And I think we should be very glad
that this is so. No man might know all that sin
means, and live. The vision would break his heart.
The God-man who came from the eternal sunshine,
and dwelt awhile in the earthly twilight, had that
vision of sin ; and it made for Him the black anguish
of Gethsemane.

Twilight and Trembling

So, I say, there is a twilight that God giveth, that
God willeth — a merciful limitation of light. But this is
not the twilight of which the prophet speaks. There
is a twilight not of God's willing but of man's desiring,
that brings the spirit of trembling into men's lives.
It is this that I want you to consider just now. 'The
twilight that I desired.' Here is the picture of a man
who is afraid to look life in the face ; who does not
want to see things as they are. He wants to limit his
own vision — to see things less plainly. He is seized
with a desire to shirk the responsibilities and pains
of life's larger knowledge. He is desirous for the
moment of laying aside his powers of insight and
discrimination and delicate judgement and keen
appreciation of life's ever changing situation. He is
willing to forgo the power of introspection.

I think we all of us have to face hours like this :
hours when we wish that a merciful blindness might
fall on our inward eye. Now, these are hours when
we need to pray for a special anointing of courage and
sincerity and faith. As I have just tried to show you,
there is a limit of vision ; but it is God's matter, and
not yours and mine, as to where that limit shall be
set. We may not be able to see much, but we are
bound to see all that we can. One of the most
persistent temptations with which we have to deal is
the temptation to shut our eyes to the things God

140

Twilight and Trembling

means us to see — to try to make twilight for ourselves.
It is the instinct of self-preservation gone astray.

We all have an instinctive shrinking from the sight
of anything painful and dreadful. I remember some
years ago being the unfortunate spectator — shall I
say? — of a serious accident. The thing happened
before my eyes. My first desire was to shut them.
It was the instinctive desire to avoid the sight of
suffering. But as I was the only person who for the
moment was in a position to render assistance, I
knew there was something else to do than that, unless
I wanted to burden the rest of my days with the
memory of a mean moment. Please understand there
was no personal risk involved in the matter — it was
simply a brief struggle with a natural desire to spare
my senses.

Now, that is a struggle that in a higher sense we
have to wage every day of our lives. The awful
drama of pain and misery is being played out before
our very eyes. We live in a suffering world. The
outlook at times is unutterably pathetic, tragic, and
saddening ; and I am afraid that so long as these
things do not cut their way into our own lives we trv
to ignore them, to live as if they were not.

I dare say we think we can justify such procedure.
There is something to be said about the spirit of
cheerfulness, and looking on the bright side. But

141

Twilight and Trembling

there is this other side, without a spark of brightness ;
and part of God's revelation is waiting you there, and
part of your work is waiting there too. If you shut
your eyes to as much of men's sadness and necessity
as you can ; if you consistently try to forget that
every day our brethren are grappling with all sorts of
hard things — grief and poverty and disease ; if you
refuse to let the holy mystery of other men's pains
come into your heart, you may find a shallow comfort
to-day, but in the harvest of your years you will have
to bind the sheaves of a trembling shame. I say it is
not for nothing that we live in a world where every
day some hear the call that may not be gainsaid —
the call to suffering. God forgive us if in the days
when that call has not come to us we have striven to
put out of our mind all remembrance of them who
have gone forth unto the fields of pain to bear a
stricken body or a bruised heart, or to lose for a
space all memory of the sunshine as they stoop to
dig a grave.

The secret of quiet confidence in a world that
furnishes us with the sight of so many sad things does
not lie in shutting our eyes. That is the expedient
of the cowardly and the faithless. It lies in looking
at things as they are, and letting the sad vision force
us back upon the mercy and power of God. If only
we have the courage and faith to look into these

142

Twilight and Trembling

things that pain the heart and try the spirit and lay
rough hands on life's sensitiveness, we shall learn
more of the patience and tenderness of God than ever
gladness alone could have taught us ; and we shall
find awaiting us among -these things a ministry of
help in the offering of which God shall perfect our
hearts in the knowledge of Himself and the love of
the brethren.

But again, it is sometimes our own life that we
would carry into the twilight. We cannot bear the
reproach of our own hearts, we cannot gaze steadfastly
at the unsightliness of our own character. We would
that the twilight shadow might fall softly upon our
self-consciousness, that we might not see ourselves as
we are. My friends, if you would know anything of
life's lasting quietness, then do not try to carry your
heart's sin fulness out of the light of God's face.
There are no hours that have richer moral value, no
hours that if rightly used will produce a richer harvest
of strength and confidence, than those hours of insight
into the faultiness arid manifold imperfection of our
own life, when, as it were, God gives us stereoscopic
vision of our own sinfulness. I know they are bitter,
shameful hours. One's self-respect is reduced to the
vanishing-point. At such times we grow sick of our
selves, and may be very despondent about ever building
a strong character and fulfilling a pure service. But,

Twilight and Trembling

I say again, they are among the most precious hours
of life — if we find the right solution of them.

There are two solutions. The one which in all
probability first suggests itself to us is this escape
into the shadows. The desire for twilight comes
upon us. We want to get somewhere where moral
judgements are softened down, and where selfishness
looks less ugly, and where a man may wrap a tissue
of excuses round a wrong thing. Yielding to this
desire, a man passes out of the searchlight of truth
into the shadow of self-deception. Immediately he
begins to think better of himself. Some of his self-
respect seems to be restored. But that is not the end
of the story.

' The twilight that I desired hath been turned into
trembling unto me.' The man who shuns the light
forfeits his own final peace of heart. He who refuses
to face his worst forfeits the possibility of finding his
best. He does not solve the question of his sin-
fulness ; he shelves it. It is there, gathering darker
meaning and more bitter consequence. Every day
twilight and trembling go together. You cannot
build the house of peace on the foundation of self-
deceit. Darkness hides wrong, but it does not alter
it. There is no salvation among the shadows of
moral delusion. There is no quietness in uncer
tainty. There are some who deliberately refuse to

144

Twilight and Trembling

look at their own spiritual position — their relation to
God the Saviour and the kingdom of peace and the
promise of life — lest they should find it unsatisfactory.
They live their lives in the vague hope that things
will be well with them 'by-and-by. They do not
desire anything more illuminating than the twilight
of a hopeful speculation. That is, at the best,
but an indefinite postponement of the day of
trembling.

Perhaps your life has carried you into the
twilight. You are not really happy. You have
tried the wrong solution of the problem of your
own sinfulness. Won't you try the alternative?
You know what it is : ' Search me, O God, and
know my heart, try me and know my thoughts ;
and see if there be any wicked way in me, and
lead me in the way everlasting.' In all things
that touch the soul it is better to see than not
to see. Better to tremble to-day than to-morrow, for
to-day there is mercy for them that tremble. If a
man will consent to face his own heart here and now,
with all its depths of foolishness and shadows of
passion and sin, he shall have nothing worse to face.
The light that shows him the greatness of his sin
shall show him also the greatness of his salvation.
' If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and
the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, He is

K 145

Twilight and Trembling

faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse
us from all unrighteousness.'

So, I say, God help us to face the light that reveals
to us the sorrows of humanity and the sins of our
own souls ; for only so can we ever come to learn
that there is a greater word than sorrow, and that
word is love. There is comfort for a world of
sorrow, and mercy for a world of sin, in the heart
of God.

146

XIII
Heroism

And David longed, and said, Oh that one would give me to drink of
the rvater of the well of Bethlehem, which is by the gate ! And the three
mighty men brake through the host of the Philistines^ and drew water
out of the well of Bethlehem , and brought it to David. — 2 SAM. xxiii.
15-16.

MORE than one beautiful thing rises before the
inward eye as this story is told. There is
the picture of a man amid the dust and peril of life
looking back to a happy childhood. And whether
a man looks back with joy or with tears — and for
most of us there is something of both in the vision
—there is something fit and beautiful in the attitude.
That is not sentimentalism. We are too visionary
to hand over the fairest moments and moods
of life to that mixture of irresponsible feeling and
unprofitable emotion that sentimentalism connotes.
We do not see how inadequate such an explanation
is. Sentimentalism talks about 'dear dead days
beyond recall.' But the days do not die. They
come back to us. And the dearer they were as we
K 2 147

Heroism

lived through them the more fresh and vivid is their
companying with us again.

There is, too, in this story the picture of a man
beholding with a swift flash of insight the sacramental
meaning of a simple deed. The water of the
Bethlehem well was brought to David. Neverthe
less he would not drink it. For him the water had
become wine — the red wine of the sacrament of self
less love. And whenever for you and for me the
veil is lifted from life's common things, and we see
the passion and patience and divinity and eternity
hidden in daily service, whenever the water in the
cup of life runs red in our eyes, we live through a
beautiful hour ; and some day God will look for the
impress of that hour on our inner life and the fruit of
it in our outer fellowship.

And then there is, too, in this story a picture of
heroism. We see three stalwarts of David's army
making their way through the enemy's lines in the
blazing sun, taking their lives in their hands — or
shall we not say more truly, not thinking about their
lives at all — that their leader might have the desire
of his heart. And that is the picture — the beautiful
thing that I have chosen out of the other fair things —
that we may just now look at it and think about it.

It is abundantly clear that no one sent the three
on their splendid errand. It is highly probable that

148

Heroism

had David known of their project he would have
forbidden it. Some one had heard a few words of
the king's soliloquy. His wish was whispered
through the camp. And these men went forth un
known to him to meet 'it. Nor was the journey of
the three through the enemy's lines mere bravado, or
for fame's sake. They of all men had least tempta
tion in these directions. It were vain to boast a
courage that all men knew, and unnecessary to seek
a fame already won. Each man had found his place
long since. They had been the heroes of many a
fight.

Let us look for the lesson of their deed. Let us
look for the gospel of heroism, the inner history of
brave hearts. Heroism is one of life's timeless things.
It belongs to no age or place. It needs no interpreta
tion. It tells its own story and wins its meed
of acknowledgement. Do not misunderstand that.
Heroism is a quiet thing. The hero is not often an
orator ; and even if he should be, his own heroism
would never seem to him to be a fit subject for an
oration. He exercises no self-repression in the
matter. He says nothing, because he does not know
of anything to say. The service of courage is a very
simple, obvious, undistinguished thing in the eyes of
those that render it. The hero is always a man of
few words, and the less he tells us the more we know ;

149

Heroism

the less he says the better we understand him. It is
through the portal of silence that he comes to his
own. If ever a man finds himself wishing that he
could do some deed, make some sacrifice which would
give him a name for courage, let him not think that
he has (to use a current phrase and misleading at
that) caught the heroic spirit, and that he is qualify
ing for a place in the roll of honour. Heroism lies
not that way at all. Of all military honours, that
which probably has been least consciously contended
for is the Victoria Cross. It is self-forgetful love,
and not self-regarding ambition, that wins that
reward.

The hero does not think about the reward though
he wins it. He does not think about the deed, he
does it He does not hold his life cheap. He does
not think of his life. It does not enter into his
reckonings. There are no reckonings for it to enter
into. Calculation is never a strong point with the
hero. The truest heroisms can be shown to have
been part of the day's work for those who did them.
Yes, and part of their essential character too. The
deed does not make the hero : it manifests him.
Danger does not bestow the heroic spirit : it demands
it. The demand often comes suddenly, but the power
to meet it comes of all a man's yesterdays. It is
a growth. Heroism is always spontaneous ; but the

Heroism

spontaneous things in life have the longest history.
The words that leap to the lip of their own accord,
the deeds done without a moment's premeditation,
are the outcome of the real self a man has been
fashioning all his life. The thing that responds to
the spur of the moment is the habit of years. There
is nothing so historical in a man's life as his
impromptus. The crises of life are decided in appar
ently uncritical hours. Through all life's least
eventful passages of experience we are deciding how
we shall bear ourselves in life's supreme moments.
The truest courage is so closely woven into the fabric
of a man's thought and feeling — is such an integral
part of his spiritual self — that it may be called an
instinct

And now we can, I think, safely come back to the
picture of David's three warrior friends. Now we are
prepared to find in their heroism a message for our
lives. Forwe have looked and seen something of the
heroic spirit. We have looked beneath the surface,
and we have at least prepared ourselves to believe that
the voice that spake to three soldiers one summer
day and sent them cheerful and determined across
the death-haunted valley of Rephaim, is speaking
also in our lives. We have looked at simple heroism
stripped of any accidental trappings — taken out of
those martial or romantic settings which have led so

Heroism

many to misunderstand it. We have seen that
heroism is an inward and spiritual thing born of an
unselfish attitude and a heart full of love. And now,
I say, it is not such a far cry from the valley of
Rephaim to the office in the city, the warehouse, the
counter and the street. Let us look each at his own
life, unromantic, prosaic, monotonous ; and see whether,
after all, the prosaism and monotony are not rather in
the fashion of our spirit than in the shape of our
circumstance. It is the heroic heart that makes the
heroic situation. And there is room in your life and
mine for that loyal uncalculating love that sent three
men in the full tide of their life and with the glory of
the harvest all about them on an errand that looked
so very like costing them their lives.

There is a sense in which we cannot have too high
a conception of heroism. When in our mind we
paint the picture of the ideal hero, we cannot make
the light in his eyes too beautiful and the poise of his
head too kingly. It is altogether good that we
should so think of heroism as to prevent our
offering the hero's crown to the essentially unheroic
life. But we must lift our conception of life and
the true terms of it and the spiritual setting of it
and the constant issues of it till we come to see that
the one man who can ever hope to do justice to life is
the hero. Surely the heroic spirit is not like the red

152

Heroism

bloom of the aloe that bursts upon the view once in a
century ! The inward conditions of its existence are
constant and abiding. The hero's work was not finished
when the last stake was set up in the market-place
and the flame of the last martyr-fire flickered out.
There is need of him while one poor soul in the city
trembles under the shadow of tyranny, or writhes in
the grip of unscrupulous power. The most real and
awful tyranny in the world is the tyranny of sin. The
hero knows that. That knowledge goes to the
development of the hero. Where sin is an abstraction
heroism is a dream. The gleam in the hero's eyes
never came from the shimmer of a false optimism or
the glamour of a weak and soothesome view of the
evil that is in the world.

We have many ways of picturing the religious life.
We have the picture of the pilgrim leaning on his
staff and shading his eyes to catch a glimpse of the
city of light. We have the picture of the steward
ordering all things fitly against his master's coming.
We have the soldier standing bravely by his comrades
and his king. But there is one picture perfectly
familiar to the mediaeval mind that we can ill afford
to lose, and that is the picture of the saint and the
dragon. If there is one thing above another that the
modern saint needs it is a personal interview with a
dragon.

'53

Heroism

Go back to your boyhood's days and recall the
time when to you the dragon was quite as admirable
a figure in his way as was the saint, though your
sympathies were always with the saint. Supposing
that some day the story had been remodelled thus :
And lo, the saint looked about him and saw the
clouds of smoke in the air, and said, ' There is a dragon
somewhere in the neighbourhood, we must try to
purify the atmosphere that the dragon is contaminat
ing.1 What would you have said ? You wouldn't
have stood it for a moment. Saints didn't exist in those
days to deal with atmospheres, but with dragons.
The saint had to go down into the black jaws of the
cavern, lighted only with the lurid flames of the
dragon's mouth, and engage the beast in mortal com
bat ; and the saint had to win. Otherwise what
profit in being a saint, or what claim to the name ?
And that, I say, is the picture we want. It is all
very well to talk about cleansing atmospheres and
lifting the tone of things, but the only thing worth
doing, the only practicable service, is going for the
dragon. And that means we must have heroes. We
must have the heroic spirit and the heroic conception
of the fight. We must see the dragons blasting the fair
and pleasant places of our land — the drink-dragon, the
gambling-dragon, the lust-dragon, the greed-dragon.
We must gird on the whole armour of God and track

Heroism

each beast to its inmost lair, and slay it, or die fighting
it. But a fight like that is not to be lightly enterprised ;
and fitness for such a fight is not to be won in a day.
And where shall you and I find the necessary training
for deeds of such high spiritual emprise ? We shall
find it just where we are. God has so ordered things
that the daily round is the school for heroes. The
essence of heroism is self-sacrifice. A man's potential
heroism is to be gauged by his actual unselfishness.
Some one has said —

'Tis as hard at duty's call

To lay one's life down day by day

As to lay it down once for all.

Those words at least suggest to us that here, on the
levels of familiar experience and apparently limited
demand, as there on the heights of opportunity or in
the depths of pain, heroism is one and the same
thing.

And now, after all, we should leave the highest
truth about heroism unuttered if we forgot to say that
the central element of it is always personal. There is
no exception to that. Men have done brave deeds
for the sake of great causes ; but even if they them
selves knew it not, it was the response of their spirit
to the spirit of those who had made the causes great.
Here, in our story, it is plain to see that, though David

Heroism

knew nothing about the errand of his three soldiers,
yet it was he who sent them out to do it. He had
won their love and their loyalty. They went for their
leader's sake. And when we turn to this great fight
of life, this peril-haunted valley of the world, and see
a man going forth unregardful of himself, uncareful of
his life, to fulfil a ministry of refreshment and help, to
offer some service of love, we know what to say of
that man. We know he is a Christ's man ; and that the
hand that feels for the sword-hilt is tingling with the
touch of that wounded palm. Men have died for the
cause, but it has been because it was Christ's cause.
They have suffered for principles, but those principles
have come to them pulsating with the warmth of the
eternal Friend of man and majestic with the majesty
of the Son of God. The heroism of a great conviction
always proves itself to be, when we come to look into
it, the heroism of a great communion.

156

XIV
The Buried Wells

*» And Isaac digged again the wells of wafer, which they had digged in
the days of Abraham his father : for the Philistines had stopped them
up. — GEN. xxvi. 18.

TAKEN as a simple fragment of history, these
words need no explanation and call for no
comment. But as I stand and watch Isaac and his
servants working away at those old and disused wells,
clearing out of them all the earth and stones with
which the wanton Philistines had choked them up,
till at last they set free once more the cool sweet
water that had quenched no man's thirst for many a
year, I can find truth in a parable. Part of your work
and mine in the world is to look for the buried springs
of life's sweet and wholesome water. And as we are
now going to be busied mainly with these springs,
let us pause for a moment before we look down for
them, and let us look right up into the heavens
above us that we may remember whence their water
comes.

157

The Buried Wells

There is a deep sense in which every life might say,
'All my springs are in Thee.' With that vision in
our hearts we need not be afraid to speak of springs
of good in men's lives. To say that you can hear the
ripple of a spring is not to say you never heard the
splash of falling rain. You can honour the water in
the well without despising the original and continuous
bounty of the skies. And so, with the great over
arching heaven in our minds all the time, we can
begin our search for the earthly wells.

And they need looking for. They are often lost
beneath the drift of the years, or choked up by the
rubbish that a Philistine world has cast into them.
And it is easy to forget that they are there. We see
the ground trampled and dust-strewn, and there is
little or nothing to suggest that down beneath that
unpromising surface there is a spring that might be
helping to refresh a tired and thirsty world.

WThat do we see as we look out on life day by day ?
There is no need that I should try to draw the picture.
It has been drawn often enough. Nay, I think it has
been drawn too often. Little is gained by wandering
up and down in the valley of Gerar after the Philistines
have passed through it, unless your mind is filled with
a vision of all the valley might have been but for the
tramp of the enemies' feet. It is only the idealist who
can really see things as they are. The world goes its

158

The Buried Wells

way before our eyes. We see the long procession of
flippancies and vanities, the struggle for money, the
false standards and mean rivalries of social life. We
see this man lifted in his pride and that man sunk in
his shame. And sometimes we think, as we look
upon these things, that we are facing the facts of the
case. But we are not. We must get down beneath the
surface. We must not be too easily satisfied with facts.
More folk have been led astray by facts than by fancies.
Witness, for instance, some of the modern social pro
paganda, dealing with facts that no sane man would
dispute, and yet not worth the paper on which it is
printed or the breaths of those who advocate it. What
you and I have to find is not merely facts, but ultimate
facts, basal facts, divine facts. Beneath the materialism
of the world's ideals we must find the divinity of the
world's destiny. Beneath men's absorption in the
arid temporalities we must find their quenchless thirst
for the water of life. Beneath the barren and
trampled surface of humanity we must find the wells
of reverence and faith and love that God Himself has
sunk in these hearts of ours. Man was made to
worship and believe and aspire. God made him so.
This Philistine world succeeds in burying deep the
springs of the heart's true life. The wells are
choked.

That is the sad fact on which we have to concentrate
159

The Buried Wells

our toil. But that involves another fact, bright and
inspiring and thrilling — the wells are there. Isaac
and his servants worked with a will, with a steady
enthusiasm, amidst those piles of stones and heaps of
earth. A bystander knowing nothing of the history
of these desert spots might well have wondered at
the sight of such hopeful toil amid such unpromising
surroundings. But they who were doing the work
were in possession of one fact that afforded them
complete inspiration. They knew that there were
springs of water if only they had the energy and
patience to come at them.

The essential spirituality of human life is an ulti
mate fact. When we toil for the souls of men, we
are not working on the strength of a speculation. We
are not prospecting. Like Isaac of old, we work where
our Father Himself has worked before us. Down in
the deeps of every human life He has set the sweet
waters of spiritual possibility. He has made men for
honour and not dishonour, for faith and not unbelief, for
self-respect and not self-degradation, for hope and not
despair, for the heavenly eternity and not the earthly
hour ; and the proof of this is written not only in the
heights of a divine revelation but in the depths of
every soul of man. And here we may take our stand,
none daring to make us afraid. There have been
times when the theologians would have called us over-

160

The Buried Wells

bold. Theology has before now come very near
denying the existence of these wells. But it is a
comfort to find that no matter in what direction
theology has gone astray, it has never been able to
take religion with it. That explains how a man can
be better than his creed. And so the world has many
a time had the edifying spectacle of some earnest
souls formally denying the existence of these buried
springs of potential good, and practically digging for
them every day of their lives.

' He digged again the wells of ... Abraham his
father ; . . . and called them after the names by
which his father had called them.' Is not that the story
of Jesus of Nazareth ? Oh how Jesus sought and
found the hidden springs of good in human life ! His
enemies in their malice and shortsightedness called
Him the ' friend of publicans and sinners.' The phrase
has become passing sweet in our ears. It holds for
us a priceless truth. But in the lips of those who first
uttered it it was a shallow lie. As a reflection upon
the moral affinities of Jesus it was a blasphemy. As
a revelation of the eternal worth of sinful men and
women, in the eyes of eternal love it is a holy truth.
1 Friend of publicans and sinners.' As His enemies
meant it Jesus was never that. It was a moral
impossibility that Jesus should be that. There is no
sort of affinity between infinite purity and the foulness
L 161

The Buried Wells

of sin. There is utter and final antagonism. As St.
Paul puts it : ' What communion hath light with
darkness ? And what concord hath Christ with
Belial ? ' Jesus did not love the publican, extortionate
and sordid, nor the woman of the city, for the shame
less life they led. He looked into the depths of their
lives and found the man and woman whom God
had made. He saw the possibilities of justice and
sympathy, of self-respect and purity, and He loved
that which He found. ' This man receiveth sinners,'
they said. Yes, but it was not their sin that appealed
to Him. He had nothing but hatred and wrath for
that. But Jesus knew, and He is teaching us to know,
that no man could be a sinner if he had not the mak
ing of a saint in him. Christ's unflinching truth and
unmeasured love sank deep shafts of discovery and
self-revelation into those buried lives. 'My Father
worketh hitherto, and I work.' * I and My Father are
one.' Yes, even as Isaac found in the devastated valley
of Gerar the wells of his father Abraham, so did Jesus
find in the barren hearts of men the wells of His
Father God. They were choked with sins and the cares
of the years, but He found them and sounded them,
and let into them the light and air of the sky of the
Father's mercy, and set the water of life, love and
faith and hope, flowing into these poor world-choked
hearts.

162

The Buried Wells

Jesus seeks men because they are worth seeking.
He died for men because they were worth dying for.
He saves men because they are worth saving. The
Cross not only reveals to us the depth of God's love
and the depth of man's sin, it reveals to us the depths
of man's soul. And, my friends, we cannot serve
men as God means we should serve them until we
have learned to look on them as Jesus looked on
them.

The ultimate fact in the worldliest life is not its
worldliness. It is the buried but living possibility of
response to the love of God, response to the tender
pleading and heavenly promise and sacrificial obedi
ence of the Saviour of the world. To have contempt
of any human life is to misinterpret the Cross of
Christ. That youth whose place of worship is the
hippodrome, and who passed you in the street sing
ing the refrain of a song caught from the reigning
goddess of the week, seems shallow enough. But
there is some deeper music in him than that. It is as
if one should play a vulgar ditty on a great organ.
The air is mean, but the instrument is noble. It has
great diapasons and a vox celeste. It was not made
to sing silly songs. It was made for the Gloria in
Excelsis. And it is so easy to forget that there is a
place waiting for that gay youth in the great anthem
of praise that began * when the morning stars sang

L 8 163

The Buried Wells

together and all the sons of God shouted for joy.'
And if some time this week you meet that youth, as
perhaps you will, do not cast round for something
mundane enough to be pleasant to him. Do not be
content to ask his opinion of Manchester City's
chances of the cup — though that might be a useful in
troduction to something better worth talking about.
Remember the place waiting for him among the sons
of God. Remember the deeps. Whatever you may
say about the gilded youth of this city, about the
miser, or the poor painted woman of the pavement, or
the dull, grey-lived dwellers in the slums — do not
call them shallow.

Perhaps you never have done so. Perhaps you
wonder why I am telling you what you could just
as easily be telling me. I will give you my reason.
Some things have to get a long way into our minds
before they get even a little way into our practices.
It is possible to talk about people as if they were
very deep, and to talk to them as if they were very
shallow. How often does our daily converse with
our fellows get beneath the surface ? How often does
it touch life's deep things ? It is so easy to hold high
and noble views of humanity, and to talk to men and
women mainly about the weather and the crops. But
there is another kind of weather and another harvest :
the world is full of storm-beaten souls, full of men and

164

The Buried Wells

women whose real deep need is that some one should
say some swelling word of sympathy and hope to
them as they stand lonely and sad in the field of life
so unready for the angel reapers.

Ah but, say some, 'the deeps of life are sacred.'
Yes, I know they are sacred. But men's talk about
the sanctity of life's hidden things is sometimes a veil
that scarcely hides their indifference to those things.
I am afraid that too often we leave the deeps of life
untouched, not because we remember they are sacred,
but because we forget they are there. A tender,
humble reverence for every human soul is part of the
secret of soul-winning. But when a man's reverence
for his brother's soul is a cheap substitute for any
practical interest in his brother's salvation, that man's
reverence is indifference and contempt. It is a sin to
be repented of. It is the very zenith of cant. It is
often alleged against a certain type of Evangelism
that it seeks to lay violent hands on men's souls, and
that therein it lacks reverence for the soul. May I
venture, here in this Mecca of Evangelism,1 to say
there is perhaps a grain of truth in the criticism.
It is never wise to try to break into the house of life,
even though you wish to give and not take. One is
so easily mistaken for an intruder, and there is in
most of us a rooted antipathy to intrusion. We
1 This sermon was preached at the Central Hall, Manchester.

"55

The Buried Wells

must have respect unto a man's threshold ; but if
that respect is to be worthy of anything it must be
born of reverence for a man's inner room. The
gospel must sometimes involve the infringement of a
convention in the name of an eternal truth.

I would rather answer the charge of having been
over eager to come at the depths of men's lives on the
errands of my Master Christ than the charge of having
held back from those depths in the name of the
conventions. Christian Evangelism stands for the
inner room of life. It stands for the deeps of life.
It stands for reverence for the human soul. Not an
anaemic, aesthetic, sentimental reverence that babbles
about the glory of humanity and has nothing to say
to humanity in its shame ; but a reverence that is own
brother to strong-winged hope and flaming love.

And now let me say a word about the intensely
personal aspect of all this. There are some words in
the hymn of a sorrowful soul that will help us here if
we use them in a way that certainly never occurred
to the writer of them. ' Deep calleth unto deep.'
Only the deep in one life can find the deep in another
life. That is the law of influence. That is the limit
of a man's power over his fellows. That is a spiritual
principle that no man who would win souls must
forget. Indeed, who of us can forget it ? It is forced
in upon us every day. I well remember how I

1 66

The Buried Wells

went forth to preach my first sermon. My main fear
was that I should not be able to preach long enough.
I soon made the perilous discovery how easy it is
to talk. The problem became reversed, and my fear
was that I should not be -able to preach short enough.
But my fear to-day is that I cannot preach deep
enough ; and that is not a fear that can be slain with
the pen, for the depth of one's words is just the depth
of one's character.

My friends, it is no good uttering the profundities.
We must live them. There is a prayer that is one
of the classics of the prayer-meeting, and we need ever
to be praying it: *O Lord, deepen Thy work of grace
in our hearts.' The peril of the external, the formal,
the habitual threatens us all. The dust and rabble
of the world is ever tending to silt up the deep wells
of reverence, and faith, and compassion, and enthusi
asm that God has sunk in our lives. It is only as the
prayer for the deeper work of grace is answered that
we shall be able to touch and stir the deeper things in
other lives, and that our tired and thirsty brothers
shall find the waters of sympathy and service spring
ing up sweet and available in the well of our heart.

167

XV

ir Faith and Haste

He that believeth shall not make haste. — ISA. xxviii. 16.

IT would be very easy to preach what some would
call ' a beautiful sermon ' from this text ; but a
sermon, alas ! that would not work out in daily life
as men have to live it. I am not sure that an idyll
from the pulpit now and again would not do us
all good ; but the weak point of that form of teaching
is this, that the truth in its idyllic forms is often
taken lightly or altogether missed by those whose lives
are thronged and pressed by the material claims and
needs of human life. So wewill try to find the working
meaning of our text. We will try to find some
interpretation of it that will not become strangely
dim and shadowy and ineffective on Monday morning.
But if I meet you in this way, and try to keep in
close touch with your lives in a louse and strenuous
world, I may reasonably ask you to meet me as I
endeavour to point out to you things which this same

168

Faith and Haste

world knows little about ; or, knowing them, chooses
to ignore them. And the one thing in particular I
will ask you to do is this. Be just to the unworld-
liness of the text. Do not conclude, as many do, that
because a thing is unworldly it is therefore unwork
able. And I think if we each keep to the terms of
our agreement, we shall find some points of contact
between faith in God and daily life which will be of
real service to us all.

' He that believeth shall not make haste.' That
does not mean he that believeth shall never be
hurried. This matter of haste is not a purely personal
matter. We live in a hasting world — a world full of
conditions that we did not make and must accept.
In the heart of a swaying crowd it is nonsense for a
man to say, ' I will not be swayed.' The crowd settles
that matter for him. But he can say, ' 1 will keep
calm and collected,' and can make good his word.
And if there are fifty people or five hundred scattered
through that crowd, each one of them a centre of quiet
self-control, one can conceive it possible for the crowd
eventually to be steadied and stilled. We cannot live
as if this world were a quiet world. We cannot
ignore the rush of life. A man in his office may be a
saint, but the most beatific vision he shall ever enjoy
will not silence the ting-ting of his telephone bell, or
stop the rush of telegrams, or lessen that pile of

169

Faith and Haste

letters that he finds on his desk every morning of the
week.

But whilst it is true that haste is inevitably involved
in vast and widespread conditions of life which have
been slowly made and cannot be instantly altered, it
is equally true that in the last analysis of them those
conditions are inward and spiritual, and can only be
altered as each man learns to adjust his own life to
the highest and the holiest laws of it.

A thousand men with a wrong view of life make it
hard for any one of their number to get and follow the
right view ; but we cannot escape from the fact that
each man has his thousandth part of responsibility
for the difficulty that in its entirety influences them
all.

Now the prophet makes the question of how men
live life a matter of faith. That is going to the very
core of things. We do not merely accept conditions
of life — we help to make those conditions. And the
prophet claims this much for faith, that it can teach
a man an inward attitude of mind and heart towards all
this busy world which shall save him from the curse
— the spiritual blight — of these feverish times, and
which, when all men have learned it as God means
they should, shall banish from life all vain, cruel,
and unprofitable pressure.

How comes it that the world is so full of haste?
170

Faith and Haste

The final answer to that question is not in circum
stances, but in the men that have fashioned circum
stances ; not in the way the outward life impinges
upon us, but in our soul's attitude towards it. This
terrible, feverish, dust- laden urgency that marks
the modern world seems to be made up of countless
things acting and reacting upon the men who have
caused them to come into existence ; but, getting down
to the root of it all, one can see that this haste must
come either from an increasingly true or an increas
ingly false view of life. Either men are drawing nearer
to life or they are getting farther away from it. I
think we shall see that the latter suggestion contains
the secret of this great and growing problem of haste.
Isaiah linked this great word about living life quietly
with a prophecy concerning the Christ who was to
come. Christ has come, and the manner of His life
among men, and the spirit of it, we know. He said
He came that men might have life. It was life
they were missing then. And, strange though it
seems to say it in these pulsating and strenuous
days, it is life they are missing now.

Jesus understood life completely. He was more
human than we are, because He was divine, and His
divinity took hold of all that is essential in humanity.
And that was the secret of the quietness of the life of
Jesus. It was a life lived for the essential things.

171

Faith and Haste

It is missing these things that turns life into a rush
and a whirl and a selfish struggle. The world is in a
mighty hurry, not because its life is so full — though
that is the way it always accounts for its haste — but
because it is so empty ; not because it touches reality
at so many points, but because it misses it at all points.
The more we hurry the less we live. Life is not to be
gauged merely quantitatively. There is a qualitative
measurement. The length of life is found by measur
ing its depth. It goes inward to the core of the soul.
It takes its meaning there and carries that meaning
out into the eternity of God. The things that
really make life are the things out of which
haste for ever cheats a man. ' He that believeth '
in Christ the ' sure foundation ' — he, that is to say,
who accepts Jesus's interpretation of life — shall not
make haste, because his faith shall show him the
futility and the needlessness of haste. It shall gird
him with the patience and the peace of them that
seek the essential things — wealth of soul, strength of
character, purity of heart, communion with God —
things that impatience cannot seize in a moment and
that faith cannot miss if it seeks them.

It is true that under favourable circumstances selfish
ness may seem to live without haste. A man may
take life quietly because he does not take it seriously.
He may be quiet because he is asleep. But that is

172

Faith and Haste

not the quietness of faith. Let not this selfish
sluggard claim a place among the disciples of a quiet
life. In the eyes of faith life in all its concerns grows
ever greater, and the greater a thing life becomes in a
man's eyes the more disposed does he become, and
the more able, to live it out quietly. Haste is the
product of a low and mistaken view of life. It is the
outcome of a vast delusion concerning the things that
matter and the things that last. Faith discovers the
delusions, and lays hold upon the few great simple
things that really count in life's long reckonings — the
clean heart, the good conscience, justice, mercy,
sympathy, and the service of love.

And, further, the haste of the world is the result of
the short view of life. The world is in such a des
perate hurry because it has no plan, no toil, no aspira
tion, which the nightfall will not blot out. Look at
the pathetic parable of haste written right across the
world — the hurried step, the strained face, the life-
driven expression with which we are all too familiar.
It means that the world is busy with work it will
soon have to put down. If a man means to make
money, he knows that he has but a few mortal years to
make it. The desire of the world is of the days and
the years. 'Now or never' is stamped upon its activi
ties and its enterprises. I do not mean that the
haste of the world comes because men have an over-

Faith and Haste

whelming sense of, or even any sense at all, of the
brevity of life. The modern world does not think of
such things. But neither does it think upon and
realize the eternity of life ; and it is failing to do this
that makes men the prey of haste. Faith in Jesus
Christ teaches us that every man must have time to
live. He that believeth shall not make haste. He has
eternity for a practical factor. He learns by his faith
to live in the eternal now. His faith reveals to him
the simple moral content of the present. There is a
sense in which faith alone can live for the present,
because faith alone has the future. Unbelief has no
to-morrow. Worldliness has no time to live. We often
say, ' I wish I had more time,' meaning, of course, that
we wish we could dispose of the hours of the day more
in accordance with our personal desires. But our real
need in life is not more time but more eternity. In
stead of saying, ' Now or never/ Christ teaches us to
say, ' Now and for ever.' He that believeth shall find
the eternal meaning and the eternal issues of these
fleeting hours. He shall know that he has time in which
to do his best because the highest faith of his soul,
the deepest desire of his heart, the most real signi
ficance of his daily toil, goes on for ever into the
eternity of God.

He that believeth can live for to-day a life unham
pered by the claims of to-morrow because he is living

174

Faith and Haste

for the for-ever. He shall not be afraid of missing any
thing really worth having. He shall not clutch with too
eager hands at life as it seems to be rushing past him, for
his faith shall teach him — the Christ shall teach him —
that life is not something that rushes past us and must
be grasped at or missed, but something that dwelleth in
us, and the true name of it is the peace of God through
Jesus Christ the Saviour and the Lover of souls.

So, my friends, it comes to this when all is said : it
is our unbelief, our irreligion, our foolish eagerness for
the things that do not matter and do not endure, our
foolish blindness to the quiet, everlasting things,
whereof each one of us may fashion his life if he will,
that make us the easy prey of an anxious, restless, and
precipitant world. Wouldst thou be delivered from
the haste that is about thee ? Then seek first of all and
always to be delivered from the haste that is within thee.

This busy world will surge about thee with the tread
of restless feet and the throb of restless hearts. And
little that thou shalt do will seem to make a pause in
the rush of things. But thou mayest in Christ find
rest unto thy soul. Thou shalt rest in thy work, know
ing that duty is eternal ; rest in thy service of the
brotherhood, knowing that sacrifice is eternal ; rest in
thy purest earthly communion, knowing that love is
eternal. This is the hasteless life, and he that believeth
in Christ, the same shall live it.

175

XVI
The Brook that Dried Up

And the word of the Lord came unto him, saying, Hide thy self by the
brook Cherith. . . . And it came to pass after a while, that the brook
dried up. . . . Get thee to Zarephath. — i KINGS xvii. 2-3, 7, 9.

r I ^HERE is no stranger story in the lips of men
J- than the story of God's providence. Sometimes
very manifest in its workings, sometimes very obscure,
always full of love, always working out the best,
always right in the end. It is one thing to be in
God's hands — as we all most surely are ; it is another
thing to know this is so. The sense of dependence is
easily lost. God does not stamp all His gifts with
the broad seal of heaven. The one divine touch that
testifies to the other-world origin of life's commonest
bounty is sometimes like the hall-mark on precious
metal-work — put where you won't see it unless you
look for it. God is ever helping us to help ourselves,
and ever weaving His ministries of help through and
around our human efforts, till we cannot say where
the one begins and the other ends. And often we say,
' 1 alone did it.'

176

The Brook that Dried Up

But this is not always so. Sometimes we get to
the end of our resources and know we have got there.
Like Elijah, we are face to face with a famine. And
of many a man in that strait it stands written, ' And
the word of the Lord came unto him/

Oh, those saving and comforting messages that are
borne unto men across the bare and blighted fields of
life ! We have heard them, and have thanked God
for the wilderness even more than for the valley clothed
with corn. In the land where the bread and the water
were failing fast, Elijah was led to Cherith and fed
there. That is a very simple passage in the history
of God's providence — a very simple illustration of the
promise, ' My God shall supply all your need.' But
the second chapter of the story makes much harder
reading. ' It came to pass that the brook dried up/
God sent Elijah to the brook, and it dried up. It
did not prove equal to the need of the prophet.
It failed. God knew it would fail. He meant it
to fail.

It was a hard thing for Elijah to see the brook dwin
dling day after day until there was scarcely a cupful of
water in the pools that had formed in the drying bed
of the stream. He probably thought what men have
ever thought in such a case as his, ' Has God forgotten
me ? Has the evil day just been staved off for a time ?
Is this sojourn of mine at Cherith more a fortunate
u 177

The Brook that Dried Up

chance than a divine interposition ? ' And then in his
extremity the word of the Lord came again to Elijah,
and he learned that the failure of the brook was part
of the divine programme of assistance.

1 The brook dried up.' This is an aspect of the
divine providence that sorely perplexes our minds
and tries our faith. We can more easily recognize
the love that gives than the love that takes away.
'How providential!' When do we say that? It
is when Cherith is singing and babbling in our ears.
We say it when a life is spared, a wish is granted,
an undertaking is completed, a need is met. With
some people providence is another word for getting
what they ask for, and being able to complete their
own plans. With many people providence has no
meaning, or even existence, apart from the glad and
successful passages of human experience. They find
a friend, a way out of their difficulty, a solution of their
personal problem ; and lo ! there is no doubt that
providence had a hand in this. But hunger and pain
and death ; the hard way ; grey days ; black nights ;
lost powers ; severed fellowships ; surrendered pur
poses and broken hopes, — what do we say of these
things? Hot and unwise words at times. The
education of our faith is incomplete if we have not
learned that there is a providence of loss, a ministry
of failing and of fading things, a gift of emptiness.

178

The Brook that Dried Up

The material insecurities of life make for its spiritual
stablishment.

A desperate situation may prove a great and
notable blessing. Before a man can say to the deep
satisfaction of his soul, ' God is true/ he may have to
find a good many things false. It is easier to trust
the gift than the giver, easier to believe in Cherith
than to believe in Jehovah. God knows that there
are heavenly whispers that men cannot hear till the
drought of trouble and weariness has silenced the
babbling brooks of joy. And He is not satisfied
until we have learned to depend, not on His gifts but
upon Himself.

So providence is a progressive thing. It is a develop
ment. There is nothing final in it. That dwindling
stream by which Elijah sat and mused is a true
picture of the life of each one of us. ' It came to pass
that the brook dried up ' — that is a history of our
yesterdays, and a prophecy for our morrows. I do
not mean that these words tell the whole story of life,
or even a very large part of it, for any one of us ; but
in some way or other we all have to learn the difference
between trusting in the gift and trusting in the Giver.
The gift may be for a while, but the Giver is the
Eternal Love. The abiding thing in life is that word
of the Lord that comes afresh into our hearts day by
day.

M * 179

The Brook that Dried Up

Let us trace that word right through this passage
in the life of Elijah. ' Hide thyself by the brook
Cherith ' — ' the brook dried up ' — ' get thee to Zare
phath.' Perhaps Elijah thought he had come to the
end of the book when he had really only come to the
end of the first chapter. There was a pause, and
then God turned the leaf for him, and Elijah learned
that although he had come to the end of his resources
God was but at the beginning of His. The providence
of God leads us into some hard places, but it never
leaves us there. Cherith is only a halting-place, it is
not our destination. We need to-morrow to explain
to-day. We must get to the end before we can
interpret the beginning. The explanation of the
hard words of life lies in the context. Too often,
I think, we take them and study them by themselves.
Let us have patience to read the sequel. Let us
learn to wait for God's explanations. Cherith was a
difficult problem to Elijah until he got to Zarephath,
and then it was all as clear as daylight. God's hard
words are never His last words. The woe and the
waste and the tears of life belong to the interlude and
not to the finale. If only Elijah, as he sat by the
dwindling stream, could have seen the widow's
cottage at Zarephath, with the meal and the oil that
failed not, he would have had no test of faith, and no
vision of God such as he did have. God did not

i So

The Brook that Dried Up

mean His servant to behold the resources of Zare-
phath until he had been brought face to face with
that availing mercy that knows no bounds of circum
stance, and that is ever brooding over a good man's
pathway. Elijah looked into the eyes of famine, and
then upward into the face of God. And then was
he brought from the brook that failed to the meal
that failed not.

And surely that is a parable of God's way with
us all. We can all say with thankful hearts, 'The
Lord gave ' ; and maybe all of us have had to say,
' and the Lord hath taken away ' : but if we are
patient and faithful we shall find grace to finish
with that victorious doxology, ' Blessed be the name
of the Lord ; for He hath given unto me double
for all my loss.' The ministry of all that passeth
away is meant to beget in our hearts a growing
confidence in all that endureth for ever. The lesson of
all fading things is not the brevity of life, but the
eternity of love. When the pleasant and comforting
babble of some Cherith falls on silence, it is but that
we may hear the low deep murmur of the river of
God that is full of water. It is the note of uncertainty
in the voices of time that sets our heart listening for the
unfaltering message of the eternal.

And thus this story in the life of Elijah may be made
to cast a strong light on those experiences of our lives

181

The Brook that Dried Up

that are hardest to bear and most difficult to under
stand : the crises, the frustrations, the dilemmas,
the seeming impotences and futilities. These things
must be looked upon as links in a chain or as
stages in a journey. The way to Zarephath lies by
Cherith. This is the precious paradox of providence
— that God builds the final success on the basis of
the temporary failure. We would like to go straight
to Zarephath. We can understand the Zarephath
providence. We can duly appreciate a roof over our
head and a certain steady balance between demand
and supply. But there are things that cannot be
taught us amid such securities as these. I speak in a
parable. There are things that we cannot learn unless
we sojourn nearer to the borderland of need : unless
we some day watch a failing brook in a famished land.
Had Elijah been led straight to Zarephath he would
have missed something that helped to make him a
wiser prophet and a better man. He lived by faith
at Cherith. And whensoever in your life and mine
some spring of earthly and outward resource has dried
up, it has been that we might learn that our help and
hope are in God who made heaven and earth.
' For most people life has had its precarious situa
tions, its baptisms of need, its hungry patiences,
and its blank outlooks. The students of old-world
geography seem to be at a loss where to locate

182

The Brook that Dried Up

Cherith ; but there is no doubt in the minds of
many people as to where it is, for they have been
there. And life would have been poorer for them if
they had not been there. Poverty, sorrow, disappoint
ment, loneliness — these and a hundred other things
may be the burden of the song that the brook sings
as the silence of drought falls slowly and surely upon
it ; but the inner message is the same for every man
who sits by that brook — and it is this, ' Have faith in
God.'

Zarephath with its securities and its comforts would
perhaps have been a dangerous place for Elijah but
for Cherith. Maybe God in His great wisdom can
not trust us at Zarephath as a permanent abode.
We might forget Him. Be that as it may, let us go
forward well assured of this, that there awaits us the
Cherith of our faith's trial and the Zarephath of our
heart's satisfaction ; and that wherever we may be,
the most significant thing to us is neither the brook
that fails nor the oil that fails not, but the word of
the Lord that endureth for ever.

XVII
' Now Naaman was a Leper, but '

Now Naaman, captain of the host of the king of Syria, was a great
man with his master, and honourable, because by him t he Lord had given
deliverance unto Syria : he was also a mighty man of valour — but he
was a leper. — 2 KINGS v. I.

AS a rule our interest in the story of Naaman
centres round the dramatic incident of his
healing in the waters of Jordan. Looking at the
story as a whole, and seeing it in its true perspective,
it is inevitable that this should be the case. But
I am going to ask you to look at the history
of Naaman from another point of view. What can
we gather from the story of Naaman's life before
there came into it the whisper of hope through the
lips of the little captive girl — his wife's lady's-maid ?
Leprosy, the most terrible disease of the East, had
developed in him. It had come in a form that did
not involve exclusion from society. It was the white
leprosy, which is one of the most slowly developing
forms of the disease. In this particular form the
leprosy is all under the skin, and the disease, which

184

'Now Naaman was a Leper, but f

may run its course for more than twenty years, results
in the end in an utter absence of feeling — unless it
changes its form in the later stages and becomes
virulent and loathsome. It is possible that Naaman
had been suffering from this incurable disease for a
number of years before the light of hope broke into
his life. Assuming this to be so, let us read our text
in another way.

* Now Naaman was a leper — but he was captain of
the host of the king of Syria, a great man with his
master, and honourable, a deliverer of his country and
a mighty man of valour.'

There is a picture of a man living out his life fully
and bravely in spite of a terrible handicap in the form
of an incurable disease, which must year after year
gain a stronger hold on his body and eventually end
his life. I grant you that the picture is pagan in its
setting. Naaman worshipped the gods of the Ara
maean Pantheon. But there are lessons in this man's
attitude towards life that we may, with no little profit,
humble ourselves to learn. The situation that Naaman
had to face is not the exceptional in life ; it is rather
the universal. Getting, for a moment, past the details
of his trouble into the principle of it, we find that in
different ways and in different degrees all men are
called to face that in life which Naaman faced — an
invincible, unavoidable, immovable limitation.

185

'Now Naaman was a Leper, but 9

We envy one another ; we name in our minds the
men with whom we would change places ; but that is
because we are very foolish and have not grasped the
idea of the universality of difficulty and pain. If all
pain left a broad mark in the sufferer's forehead ; if,
like the leprosy of Naaman, it could be seen at a
glance, there would be an end of our fool's envying.

I do not think that Naaman in his popularity and
success was a much-envied man. There was the
fame and the power — and the leprosy. There was
the honour — and the suffering. It is always so.
There is always the other side of things. And
if we could change personalities, we should have
to be prepared to take not only the joys and the
opportunities and the satisfactions of that other
man's life, but also the martyrdoms, the baffle
ments, the burdens and the unlifting shadows. And
remembering this may help to make us less envious
and more sympathetic. No man's life-story can be
told without naming the hard thing in it — sometimes
the tragically hard thing. For some it is persistent
ill-health — a body that is continually disappointing
them, failing them, thwarting them. For some it is
a nervous temperament that demands a cruel price
for the fulfilment of daily demands — demands which
others can meet with ease, and even with pleasure.
For this man it is the shadow of a cruel and devas-

186

'Now Naaman was a Leper, but '

tating experience that must lie on his path to the last
step of it ; and for that it is some constitutional defect
that has to be reckoned with in everything he does.
In short, Naaman the leper may be looked upon as
typical of the widest and -most familiar range of
human experience.

And the question comes, How do we face this side
of things ? Naaman faced it with courage. And it
was courage of no mean order. It was not born of
hope. We say sometimes, ' While there is life there
is hope.' But that was not true in the case of the
leper. He saw the long years of suffering, and knew,
humanly speaking, that the way would only get
harder the farther he went. Part of the work of life
for him was to carry one of the heaviest burdens that
a man ever has to carry — the burden of a dead hope.
He could not say with regard to his disease, ' While
there is life there is hope ' ; but he found a better and
a nobler thing to say, 'While there is life there is
duty.' There is no braver story in history than the
story of them who have had to stoop and lift and
bear the hope that might have lifted and borne them,
if only both its wings had not been broken. Some of
the world's leaders and deliverers and helpers have
been men who have had courage to look beyond the
thing that could not be, and who have known that
the only way to overcome some things is to accept

187

'Now Naaman was a Leper, but '

them — the only way to conquer them is to bear them.
The faith to remove mountains is not a complete
equipment for life. We need also the courage and
strength to climb them. There is something in
spiring and edifying in the picture of a man from
whom much has been taken daring to believe that
more is left — if only he has courage to look for it ; or
in the picture of a man to whom much has been
denied bravely confessing that more has been granted.
The leper who found no time to pity himself or to
bemoan his affliction ; who forgot himself in the
manifold toils and responsibilities of a field-marshal
and a cabinet minister ; and who saved his country's
fortune at a critical period in her history — has some
thing to teach us. Of all the luxuries of life, perhaps
the most unwarrantable and in the end the most
wasteful and costly is the luxury of despair. And
how many there are who indulge in it ! A man may
have to walk in a deep shadow, but he has no right
to sit in it. Much less has he the right to assume
that that shadow loosens for him the bonds of duty,
or absolves him from the claims of the world's work.
Naaman did not let his leprosy spoil his career.

Yet how many there are who do let the one thing
they cannot have rob them of the hundred things
that may be theirs. ' But he was a leper.' These
words do not serve as an excuse for a life that failed ;

188

'Now Naaman was a Leper, but f

they serve rather as a dark background against
which courage and endurance were able to paint a
bright success. One cannot help feeling that Naa
man, who bowed himself in the temple of the god
Rimmon, whose religion offered no interpretation of
pain, and who lived ages before the world had heard
of the Captain of its salvation ' made perfect through
suffering,' offers at once an example and a rebuke to
some who are numbered by their profession among
the members of the Christian Church, and who yet
let their pain of life destroy the promise of life, and
who cease to work in the measure that they are called
to suffer.

And this brings us to the thing that was wanting
in the courage and endurance of Naaman. As I
conceded at the beginning, however instructive the
story may be, it is pagan. Look at the Syrian
captain sitting and fuming in his chariot at the
door of Elisha. Look at the humiliating picture of
this great lord in his pride and his rage and his
wilfulness. His suffering had not sweetened his life.
He had borne it; but he had not understood it. He
had not been able to interpret a word of it. That
was not his fault. And there is a sense in which his
brave conquest over a disability which held for him
no high or beautiful meaning may well beget in our
hearts much shame — shame that we for whom the

189

'Now Naaman was a Leper, but '

pain of life has been made somewhat intelligible
should still find it in no wise bearable. If only
Naaman had known that it is not every man who is
counted worthy to suffer, if only he could have sat at
the feet of St. Paul, and could have heard all which
that troubled and yet triumphant life could have told
him of the ministry of pain and of the divine fulfilment
that lies concealed in earthly frustration, how much
richer would have been the story of those brave
years ! He did not know these things, and doubtless
he was judged according to his knowledge; but we
know them, and we shall be judged according to ours.

The lesson of Naaman's courage is one that we
need perhaps to-day more than ever ; but it is not
all that we need. He can teach us much ; but he
cannot, no matter how long we study him, carry
our education as far as it can be carried.

To sum things up, what is it that he can teach us,
and what are these other things he himself had not
learned ? He can teach us to face the unalterable
with courage. He can teach us that the inevitable
is not the unconquerable ; that men are not useful
because they are happy, but that they are happy
because they are useful ; and that it takes more than
the limitation resulting from ill-health, broken hopes,
devastated resources, and persistently bitter experi
ences to blight a man's life. He can teach us how

190

'Now Naaman was a Leper, but '

much may be accomplished by the man who bravely
accepts the call to work knowing that there is that in
his life which must make every task harder, and every
burden heavier to bear. And that much is worth
learning. But Naaman cannot teach us the highest
lessons of pain, and that interpretation of every hard
thing that has been given to the world in the gospel
of the suffering Son of God. Jesus has taught us by
His life and by His Cross that pain is a burden
meant to bless the life that bears it ; that the limita
tions of the outward life may help men to find the
freedom of the inward life ; and that in Him all men
may win the true victory over life's hard thing — the
victory which cannot be his who merely faces pain
with courage, or endures it with patience, but which
awaits that man who by the grace of Christ finds its
sacramental meaning, and passes through it into a
better manhood on earth and a larger treasure in
heaven.

191

XVIII
Consecration of the Commonplace

As every day's work required. — I CHRON. xvi. 37.

T7VERY day's work! Perhaps you think I
A—-' might have found something better to speak
about than that. The day's work ! You are tired
of it. You are hand-weary and heart-weary with it.
It is for many of you a story of care, and anxiety,
and all sorts of hindrance and belittlement. For all
of you it is something from which at times you are
glad to turn. More than once you have been not
a little weary of it. And now you have stolen away
from it and all its associations for a while, and have
sheltered yourselves in the peace of God's house; and
lo ! the preacher has taken it for a text ! He might
surely have found something higher and nobler. ' Give
us some beautiful, inspiring, quiet thoughts that will
lift our lives and hush our spirits. Take us into the
temple. Take us through the rent veil. Let us stand
with bowed heads before the precious mysteries of the

192

Consecration of the Commonplace

kingdom of God. Feed our hearts on life's inward
things. Tell us about some of those things we have
not had time to think of during the last six days.
My friends, I would not help you to forget the day's
work, if I could ; but I should like to help you to
understand it. And as for taking you into the temple
— that is just what I am doing. That is where I went
to find this text. I saw the white-robed priests
ministering before the altar. I heard their solemn
litanies. I caught the fragrance of their incense. I
stood among them as they performed their sacred
ministry ; — and lo ! in the midst of it all I came across
the day's work. I found it in the sanctuary.

Let me read you the whole verse of which our text
forms the conclusion. ' So he left there, before the ark
of the covenant of the Lord, Asaph and his brethren,
to minister before the ark continually, as every day's
work required.' That was the law of service in the
tabernacle, and that is the law of service in the lives
of all who would give themselves to God. The
temple service was the day's work ; the day's work
was the temple service. And if it is given to me to
make that a little plainer to some of you, I shall be
well content.

The tabernacle and its symbolism have passed away.
We have heard of another temple, even the temple
of the heart ; of another altar— the unseen altar of
N 193

Consecration of the Commonplace

sacrifice. But we do not understand, or we but
imperfectly understand, how that the law of that altar
is written in the day's work. Too often we think of
the law of that altar as something remote and sepa
rate. Ever and again we let the thick of the world
come between us and it. We look on the day's work
as something that stands between us and the way of
worship. We do not understand that the law of the
altar is written in life just as we have to live it. It is
bound up in the daily demand. It is involved in our
immediate circumstance. The shadow of the Cross
lies on all our toil for bread ; and the manifold
imperatives of earth are but the laws of heaven trans
lated into a language that all who would do right can
understand. God claims us for Himself. He waits to
write His name in our hearts and to accomplish His
purpose in our lives ; but the fashion of that demand
of His is ' as every day's work requires.' Religion is
not something above and beyond life, it is not even
something near life — it is life itself. It is the inward,
all-persuasive spirit of it, if we are living as God means
us to live. There is, it is true, an ineffable sacredness
in the religion of Bethlehem and Calvary, but it is
not the sacredness that must be isolated from a busy,
dusty world. There are dogmas that mean little in
the street and theologic definitions that are but a
burden to the busy and a confusion to the simple,

194

Consecration of the Commonplace

but He to whom Bethlehem and Calvary owe all
their significance lived and toiled and taught and
sympathized and served in the heart of the workaday
world.

If Jesus Christ made men to know anything, surely
it was this — that the busier and the dustier the world
they lived in, the more did they need the plea of the
altar and the shadow of the Cross. God does not
take us out of the world of men and things to make
us His own. The Prince of Peace does not fix a
pause in the whirl and clatter of a toilsome world to
make His claim good in our lives. He does not show
us His salvation in spite of the day's work, but by
means of it. It is not an obstacle He overcomes;
it is a means He uses. He comes to us in all we have
to do from morn till even, and He says, * This is My
work if it is well done.'

We cannot hear too much about the divinity of
toil, as long as we know what we are talking about.
There is no divinity in toil for toil's sake. There is
no spiritual glory and beauty in mere effort. Let us
not deify labour. A man may work like a slave, and
never catch a glimpse of God in all his toiling. But
once let a man see the altar where the ultimate
requirement of his work is written and the whole doing
of it may be laid, and the seeming gulf between work
and worship disappears. Once let a man see that the
N 2 195

Consecration of the Commonplace

thing that is called dire necessity, force of circum
stance, bread-winning — the day's work — is just God
coming to him, and speaking to him, and fashioning his
life for him, and making him something better than he
was and better than he is, — I say, let him see this,
and then talk about the divinity of toil. Why, it is all
divinity ! There is a great word that we are afraid to
bring into our lives because we are so busy, and because
we handle material things hour after hour — the word
consecration. But, whether we name it or no, it belongs
to life at its busiest, life in its lowliest toils and its
most commonplace situations. Possibly we associate
the consecration of our lives to God with the quiet of
some never-to-be-forgotten Sabbath service, or some
hour when away from the voices of the world we
heard God speaking to us, and gave ourselves for the
first time, or afresh, unto His service and into His
keeping in the name of Christ our Saviour. These
passages in our experience mean all we have ever
taken them to mean — and more; but we miss the
truest significance of such experiences if our idea of
consecration is limited to them. Consecration is not
an act, it is an attitude. It is not an event, it is a
process. It is not merely vowing a vow, it is keeping
it. It is something that is made real and effectual as
we meet the requirement of every day in the spirit of
those memorable moments when in some special

196

Consecration of the Commonplace

manner God has touched our hearts and made His
claim felt in our lives. There are no gaps in the
divine purpose concerning us. God's work in our
lives is all of a piece. The hours when the earthly
fashion of life does not obscure its heavenly meaning,
and when the divine claim seems the only thing worth
listening to, are given to us for the sake of those
hours when the flesh lusteth against the spirit, and
when the many voices of the world are dinning their
claims into our ears.

' As every day's work required.' That is the defin
ing line of the service of faith. That is the measure
of God's demand. Sometimes we do not understand
this. We feel the consecrating power of solemn
duties and great sorrows ; and of those days that
bring us face to face with definite and final moral
choices. But every day is not a great day in this
sense. More often life's demands are monotonous,
and the situations it creates for us day by day are
unheroic, fretful, and even belittling. The very toils
and troubles and besetments of our lives seem essen
tially commonplace. Sometimes the littleness of it
all makes us sick at heart.

But this is because we look at life in the wrong
way. This is because we do not know that the temple
service of life is not a periodic ceremonial, not a stately
ordering of the soul at times and seasons. It is ' as

197

Consecration of the Commonplace

every day's work requires.' It is defined by and
involved in the actual situation. Into all the grey
fabric of life in its most familiar fashioning we can
weave the golden threads of inward consecration.
Common life's reality is one continuous opportunity
for giving ourselves to God. The whole yielding of
the heart's obedience to the will of the Heavenly
Father is not finished in the hush of the Sabbath
peace, in the call to a life-sacrifice or a life-sorrow.
It is done little by little. It is involved in life's sim
plicities, its necessities, its monotonies, and its details.
When you feel that to be so, you know that, for the
soul, life is always great, and there are no trifles.

The trivial round, the common task,
Will furnish all we ought to ask :
Room to deny ourselves — a road
To bring us daily nearer God.

Thus we sing and thus we speak ; and yet we go
forth to find in the trivial round nothing but triviality,
and in the common task nothing to make us sure of
God and truth.

Perhaps there are some listening to me who
have not answered the divine claim ; who have
made no attempt to offer to God in Jesus Christ the
sacrifice of the heart. You are waiting, maybe, as I
believe many do wait, for some special and irresistible
appeal — some hour when, spaced off from all the

198

Consecration of the Commonplace

ministry of toil and care, you shall hear God speaking
to you in sure and unmistakable tones. But are you
not ignoring that appeal of His to you that is in
every hour and place of life ? ' As every day's work
requires.' Do you not see how close that brings God
to you ? Do you not see how near to you lies the
way of life and peace and godly service ? The day's
work! The thing you are tired of; the thing you
think you know so well ; the thing that holds for you
no surprises, no revelations, no thrills of joy, no
abiding satisfactions of spirit. Perhaps you do not
know as much about it as you think. Perhaps you
have only seen the earthly aspect of it — the wrong
side of it, so to speak. The face of God, the peace of
Jesus Christ, the light of the Spirit — you may find all
these in the day's work if only you will believe it.
This is God's way into our lives. This is our way into
His life. This is the secret of sainthood — serving
the divine Master as every day's work requires,
recognizing the divine law in all human necessity.
Seek for a truer sense of this daily requirement folded
in life just as you have to live it. To bring the ten
derness of Jesus Christ into every relationship, and
the faithfulness of Jesus Christ into every labour ; to
remember that the inner purpose of the heart is the
thing by which we stand or fall ; to live for justice as
some live for gain ; and to serve the world, not

199

Consecration of the Commonplace

according to its base demands and harsh imperatives,
but according to the large helpfulness of love — this is
to live life ' as every day's work requires.' And for
the man who lives thus the law of the altar ever
becomes clearer and more continuously manifest in
all that he has to suffer or to do, and every day
finds him more sure that, for them that believe, the
purposes of heaven are fulfilled and not frustrated
through the necessities of earth.

200

XIX
"The Large Room

Thou hast set my feet in a large room. — Ps. xxxi. 8.

TO many people these seem strange words to
come from the lips of age and experience. It
is youth and inexperience that find the world a large
room. Before we came into touch with the realities
of life, while the powers of mind and heart were still
untried, we had visions of very wide possibilities, we
felt within us suggestions of unfettered and inex
haustible powers. The world is a very roomy place
— for the bairns. There are no impossibilities in the
nursery. But as the happy careless days are left
behind us ; as the days come when we have to think
for ourselves, when life is no longer bounded by the
morning and the evening of each day; as we look
back on a past of which we are often heartily
ashamed, or forward to a future of which we are
not a little afraid ; as the rounding years bring
responsibilities and sorrows, — the world seems to
shrink, life closes in upon us and leaves us scarcely

201

The Large Room

room to breathe, and existence sometimes appears a
very narrow, limited, and hampered affair. Those of
you who have revisited places and scenes after the
lapse of years will remember how much smaller
everything appeared to you on that second visit. I
remember during my college days visiting a well-
known town in Derbyshire where I spent three years
of my early boyhood. I went to the old manse
garden — a garden that had once seemed so large that
I felt a little bit lonely when the long shadows of the
evening crept across the lawn, and darker shades
gathered beneath the trees. I could hardly believe
that I was back in the old spot ; for I had always
thought of that lawn as a prairie, and the few trees
had been a forest. The place had grown smaller.
No, it hadn't! It hadn't altered by a hand-breadth.
It was I who had grown. Life seems to us at the
beginning to have so much to give, because we have
so little to ask. It may seem to us sometimes as if
the supply had grown less; we are nearer the truth
when we say the demand has grown greater. Life
was boundless only because we could not see the
boundaries. Now we have stronger vision, and we
can see them ; and now we must pray for stronger
vision still — vision that can see beyond them. Every
one has to part with that sense of the world's wideness
that is born of a child's false perspective. Every one

202

The Large Room

must say good-bye to the freedom that comes of
ignorance. Every one must outgrow the life that
is easily satisfied, easily filled. But all do not realize
that a man's emptiness is a finer thing than a child's
fullness — that the process of growing up is not a
narrowing, but a widening process. We must pass
from the life in which we can see no limitations, into
the life in which we overcome them. The worst of it
is that so many count the illimitable horizon of child
hood as nothing more than a beautiful illusion. They
do not understand how that it is the will of God that
a man should pass out of the wideness that seems
into the wideness that is ; and the way into that
real wideness lies through much that is narrow and
hard — much that hinders the feet and chafes the
spirit.

'Thou hast set my feet in a large room/ The
writer of those words had left his childhood far behind
him. He had entered into manhood's inheritance of
duty and responsibility. He had been many a time
over-caught in the coil of adverse circumstance; he
had sorrowed and suffered and sinned ; he had
faced temptation and found bitter proof of his
own weakness ; he had faced the many-sided and
intricate problem of existence ; he knew some
thing of the inevitable and the unalterable, — and
yet, calmly mindful of all this, his verdict upon

203

The Large Room

existence was this : * Thou hast set my feet in a large
room.'

After having seen the sordidness and meanness and
littleness of things, David still held that life is a grand,
free, glorious gift — that it is liberty and opportunity
and hope. What was the secret of his wide and
worthy view of life ? How had he escaped these
narrower and meaner thoughts that crowd into men's
minds and belittle their lives ? He had laid hold
upon God. He looked at life through the divine
purpose. He found the high and noble meaning of
the dusty parable that men call the day's work.
When he talks of life as a large room, it is really his
way of saying, 'Thy service is perfect freedom.' If
life is lived to God, then it is wider than any man can
measure. We look at life as it comes day after day
with the same duties and difficulties and needs; we
face the little cares and vexations that are never long
absent from any one's experience ; and life becomes
mechanical, monotonous, insignificant. We conclude
that life is dull and cramped and narrowed down ;
and whether we express it in words or no, the thought
of our heart is this, ' Thou hast set my feet in a small
room.' And we come to that conclusion because we
have missed the very purpose for which God has set
us where He has set us, and made us what we are.
If you think you are here in this world to make a

204

The Large Room

name for yourself that shall be in other men's lips ;
if you think the chief end of your being is that you
should enjoy yourself; then your measurements of
this room of life are about accurate. But supposing
you admit you are here to grow a soul — supposing
you discover that there is a spiritual and eternal signifi
cance in every detail of the day's life : what then ?
I think you will be led to the conclusion that you are
living in a room that God alone can measure, and
you will find that the dimensions of life are infinite.
If you are bent on what you call good fortune, then
very likely life is a meagre and contemptible chance ;
but if your heart is set on a good character, then
opportunity assumes boundless proportions. Life is
a pitiably small room for the people who do not
know why they are here at all ; or who, knowing
something of life's highest purposes and ends,
deliberately seek something lower than the highest
and less than the best. If your shop is only a place
for merchandise ; if your kitchen has nothing more
than a domestic significance ; then I confess life is a
very small affair, and it is a great question whether
it is really worth while going on with it at all. But
God means you to get beyond the brief moment and
the earthly means, into the vast eternal reason for
existence. Buying and selling are small things ; but
honesty is a very great thing. There is nothing very

205

The Large Room

significant or impressive about the household work ;
but patience and kindliness, and service of one
another are great, deathless things. The pains that
our bodies suffer, the fret and jar of circumstance and
all life's common necessities, are small things in them
selves; but the courage and sympathy and self-control
and unselfishness that in the purpose of God are to
grow out of these things, are great with a greatness
we cannot at present estimate. The things that we
call hindrances are, if we but knew it, spacious op
portunities for brave and worthy living. If a man is
bent on serving himself and his desire, then very often
the day's life becomes to him a prison-house from
which there is no escape ; but if he be bent on serving
the God above him, then in his most hard-pressed
moments he shall taste the liberty of obedience, and
in his most straitened circumstance he shall breathe
the ampler air in which it is given unto every faithful
heart to dwell. Life is a small room for the man
who tries to please himself, but it is a very large
room for the man who is willing to deny himself. If
love, and faith, and toil, and prayer, and patience, and
a good conscience, and service of the brethren are
the best things — the things that count and last — then
I say the room of life is larger than many would have
us believe, and holds for us more possibility than we
shall ever fully realize and use. Never can we call

206

The Large Room

life narrow and cramped while there is 'room to deny
ourselves/ to save our brethren, and to follow the
Christ.

1 Thou hast set my feet in a large room/ Sin, more
than anything else, seems to take the meaning out
of these words. There is the inherited weakness
and the encircling contagion. Within us, the evil
tendency ; without us, the unhallowed opportunity.
Sometimes a man accepts the pressing solicitation of
evil, or yields to the hot-handed grip of the world's
desire ; and then with a demeaned dignity and lowered
self-respect, he measures life and finds he has but a
few square feet in which to stand and call himself a
fool. Did I say he measures life ? I withdraw that
word. He measures his shame and his weakness, —
his poor failure. But these are not life — they are only
things that lead the way to it.

For this is life : to love the light,
To see the best, to ask for all;
To seek a city out of sight,
In spite of failure and of fall.

It is through the narrow winding ways of manifold
temptation that a man enters into the splendid sweep
of his own soul's liberty. We have to think of the
things that are given to us in the fighting, and the
things that wait us when the fight is fought. What
happens to the man who resolutely takes his place in

207

The Large Room

the battle against sin — his own sin, the world's sin ?
Day by day the soul within him, that has its birth
place and its goal beyond the stars, asserts itself, as it
discovers larger rights and possibilities, and an ever
surer hope of victory gives vision not bounded by life's
most pressing and persistent circumstance. Day by
day it becomes more apparent that the life of the soul
is circled by an horizon that its most daring dreams
have never scanned, and that for the pure-hearted the
dusty, choking, hand-to-hand encounter with sin holds
promise wider than the world. My friend, if in this
day of much striving you are growing sick and weary,
let me remind you of the great end of it all. You are
not fighting for the little patch of trampled earth
beneath your feet — where the grass and the flowers
have been beaten into common dust. You are fight
ing for the right and fitness to enter the Land that is
very far off, where, by the river of nameless peace,
men have life because they see God. Surely the
life that finds room for a fight like that, is a wide
life!

* Thou hast set my feet in a large room.' Those
are the words of a man who has felt the force of his
own immortality. He has found that on one side of
this room of life there is no wall to limit and fold us.
Life goes out into God's eternity. That is where God
has fashioned it to go. Too often we find our eternity

208

The Large Room

in the calendar, and measure infinity by a foot-rule.
We think there is nothing in this room of life that
cannot be submitted to our chronology and our men
suration. ' Thou hast set my feet in a small room. I
know it is small ; I have measured it, I have sat in it
and listened to the ticking of the seconds and the
chiming of the hours.' O foolish one ! You have
only measured three sides of that room. You cannot
measure the fourth side unless you can measure God.

We batter and bruise ourselves against the hard
wall of life's stern necessities, its painful compulsions,
its seemingly unheeding laws ; and we deduce from
our aching spirits a parable of life's narrowness.
And yet, if we but recognized it, if we but trusted
our hearts instead of our eyes, we should know that
God is the soul's circumstance, and His infinitude is
its breathing-space. 'Thou hast set my feet in a
large room' — for Thou hast set me to live where I
may find Thee, and serve Thee, and grow like unto
Thee. I have Thy mercy to live by, Thy work to
do, Thy heaven to win ; and that is enough — for
it is all.'

209

XX

Going in the Strength of the Lord

I will go in the strength of the Lord. — Ps. Ixxi. 16.

THIS is one of the longest texts in the Bible. In
its application it covers an indefinite period of
time. The way to write this text is to put a few
asterisks after the first three words, ' I will go.'
Asterisks, as you know, are used in books to signify
a lapse of time. They denote that there is a space of
time — days, or it may be years — between the story
that comes before them and the story that follows them.
So, I say, we need asterisks in this text. There is
sometimes a long stretch of years between ' I will go '
and ' in the strength of the Lord.' There is often a
lapse of time ere the first and last words of this verse
meet, ' I ' and ' the Lord.' Divinity is not always the
first resource of humanity. Often it is its last resource.
Men do not learn all at once to take God into their
reckonings when they make their plans and forecast
their endeavours. Some never learn that. And how
ever the world may judge them, however it may con-

210

Going in the Strength of the Lord

gratulate them and envy them, whatever the fashion of
their earthly fortunes, they are the failures — the real
and final failures ; and the day comes when they know
that this is so.

' I will go.' That is often the whole text in lips of
inexperience. I speak to you who are so sure of your
selves. You with your youth and your untried strength,
that is so much as you look at it, but that will prove to
be so little when you come to spend it. At the begin
ning of life we look on our resources somewhat as
the boy looks at his first half-sovereign. That little
yellow coin is a perfect mint of money, till he comes
to spend it, and very likely when it is gone he has
precious little to show for it. It did not buy much.
It just melted. So with life. Life comes to us as an
inexhaustible inheritance — a limitless patrimony, and
there be not a few, I fear, who at the end of the day
have little left them but to wonder what has become
of all they once had. So, I say, the words in the lips
of youth are these : ' " I will go." Do not talk to me
about strength for the going. Am I not strong ?
Cannot I stand this journey of life ? Of course I can.
I feel able to go anywhere, climb any height, descend
into any valley, cross the widest plain. I am not
troubled about my ability to face the road. " I will
go " — I must go. There are a thousand voices calling
me in the world of men and things. There are so
o 2 211

Going in the Strength of the Lord

many things I want to see — I will go and see them ;
so many things I want to gain — I will go and gain
them ; so many things I want to enjoy — I will go
and enjoy them. I know I can.'

Oh the wild strong will of youth ! Oh the omnipo
tence of those early determinations ! Oh the finality
of those early decisions ! ' I will go in mine own
strength. It is enough, and it will never fail me.'
But oh, how tired the feet grow ! and how far away
the blue mountains ever are ; and the journey grows
greater and the pilgrim's strength less every day.
And it may be there comes a day when the traveller
can go no farther, all the strength of love and hope
and enthusiasm expended. And there is nothing for
it but despair or divinity. The soul finds God or
it finds nothing. Life becomes a tragic failure or a
triumph of faith. Sometime and somewhere in life a
man has to learn the limits of self-help. He has to
learn that nothing but heavenly strength can make
life practicable. And the question of success or failure
depends on whether he learns this lesson with the sun
in the east and the day before him, or whether he
learns it when the westering light casts long shadows
on the way, telling him there are for him but a few
more steps to take, and he must needs lean his worn
and broken humanity on God if he is to take even
them.

212

Going in the Strength of the Lord

I do not say to you as you look within and forward
that hope is not strong, that enthusiasm is not guer
doned with splendid energy, and that love is not
grandly availing. I do not wish you to think lightly
of life as God has given it to you. I would only
remind you that there are weights of weakness, blows
of temptation, and tempests of shame that are heavy
and strong enough to break the wings of hope, and
enthusiasm, and the very heart of love — for the life
that is without God in the world.

But it may be that no one at the beginning of life
can feel the full force of such thoughts as these.
With the sense of unmeasured and inexhaustible
power within, the promise of difficulty acts as a
stimulus and a challenge rather than as a reason for
a careful and thoughtful consideration of the situa
tion. You may say to me, ' I know that life is neither
easy nor safe. I know there are hindrances and risks
and threats. That is part of my reason for going
forth to meet it gaily and gladly. I would not thank
you for a life with never a hill to breast, never a
wrestle with the elements, never the chance of an
ambushed foe.' Well, maybe such thoughts, such
gallant and tingling anticipations, belong to life's
early years. Maybe you cannot, standing straight
and joyous in the morning light, lean on God as you
will need to lean on Him ere the last long hill be

213

Going in the Strength of the Lord

climbed, and the last cruel foe be slain ; but it is
much to feel Him near you, to find His presence in
your worship, prayer, and faith, so that when the
dangers that seem to-day beyond realization shall by-
and-by be beyond escape you may be able to say,
' Thou art my strong refuge/

But supposing that instead of thinking about the
way itself, we begin to think about the end of the
way. Instead of thinking about the difficulty of life,
let us think about the destiny of life. ' I will go in
mine own strength/ Yes, but where will you go ?
What is to be your destination ? You may have
health and skill to work, and the brain to think, and
the heart to make many friends ; and if the end of
life were just to become a skilled workman, a clever
student, or a social success, — why you might do that
' on your own/

But when you come to understand, as I would that
you might understand even here and now, that you
are here in the world to make a saint, to find some of
the meaning of the immortal ideas of beauty, truth,
goodness, sacrifice, and to develop and cherish in your
heart that love that loves for love's sake, unrepelled
by ugliness, unchilled by indifference, undaunted by
malice, — why then, I say, you are face to face with
something that strikes through your self-confidence
and drives home into your soul a sense of your insuf-

214

Going in the Strength of the Lord

ficiency for life as it was meant to be lived. ' I will
go.' Say no more than that if you are only going to
the market to make the best of a few bargains, and to
the social circle to get the good word of a few friends.
But that is not life. That is not finding your destina
tion ; that is missing the way — and any one with
neither genius nor industry can do that.

Beware of finding too easy an interpretation of life.
If you were to study the Greek manuscripts from
which we get the text of our New Testament you
would sometimes find two different renderings of the
same text. Now, whenever that happens, the student,
amongst other things of course, has to remember this
law of criticism, ' The more difficult reading is to be
preferred.' I will tell you why. When a scribe was
copying a portion of Scripture, say a passage from
St. Paul, if he came to a word that he could not under
stand he was tempted now and again to substitute for
it an easier word — something that made sense as he
thought. He was never tempted to take a plain verse
and put in a word that made its meaning hard and
obscure. So the student has to remember that of two
readings the harder one — the one that takes more
understanding, more thinking out — is probably the
older and truer one. So is it with life. It is the
hard reading that is the true one. Jesus Christ has
given that interpretation of life to us all. For ease,

215

Going in the Strength of the Lord

He says, we must read discipline, for pleasure we must
read duty, for man's desire we must read God's
commandment, and for self-interest we must read
sacrifice. And these words that Jesus has given us
as the true reading of life reveal to us a path that no
man can find and follow unless he has the Divine
Friend at his side.

Now I would bid you look at life as He shows
it to you. Look at the things that give meaning and
value and immortality to life. People sometimes say
to youth, ' The world is at your feet/ But that is not
true unless heaven is in your heart. Look out beyond
the brief ambitions, the trivial honours, the cheap
victories, and the spurious gains of earth, and behold
— oh, so far beyond them all ! — the stainless light
shining from the towers and pinnacles of the city of
God. And know that if ever you are to come to the
gates of that city, it must be by winning a victory
compared with which every temporal achievement is
but child's play. For the everlasting shelter and
reward of that city are not for them whose hands are
full, but for them whose hands are clean ; not for
them who have won honours, but for them who have
learned humility ; not for the successful, but for the
unselfish ; not for the clever, but for the faithful ; not
for them that have won the world as their prize, but
for them that have overcome the world by the grace;

316

Going in the Strength of the Lord

of that eternal life Christ giveth unto them that trust
and follow Him.

And we are here in this world to find that city, to
obey the laws of it in our hearts every day, and to
come to the glory of it at the end of the days. What
shall we say, we who are foolish of thought, weak of
will, and sinful of heart — ' I will go ' ? No, that is not
enough. It was enough when our destination was the
market-place, but it will never take us to the city of
God. We must turn to One who came to us here
that we might go to Him there. We must ask for
that strength that is folded in the forgiving love and
renewing grace of God in Christ our Saviour. The
Cross that stood at the end of His journey — the ful
filment of life — stands at the beginning of ours, the
inspiration of life. And there we may learn to say,
1 1 will go in the strength of the Lord.'

217

XXI
inspiration and Outlook1

And it shall come to pass in the last days, saith God, I will pour out
of my Spirit upon all flesh : and your sons and your daughters shall
prophesy, and your young men shall see visions and your old men shall
d > earn dreams. — ACTS ii. 17.

And I, John, saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down from
God out of heaven. — REV. xxi. 2.

IN dealing with these passages let us be very
practical. It would be easy to talk vaguely about
the outpouring of the Holy Spirit in human hearts
bringing visions to the young and dreams to the old.
The advantage of this method would be that somebody
would be certain to be well satisfied with the discourse.
Some people like teaching — if one may dignify it with
that great name — that is a bit misty. It hangs round
their minds for half-an-hour like a pleasing nimbus,
and is so easily forgotten. Now, to keep well out of
the zone of mist, I have set side by side with this
great prophecy concerning the work of the Divine

1 Preached at the Wesley Guild Conference, Aberystwyth,
Whitsuntide 1906.

218

Inspiration and Outlook

Spirit, a plain and historical example of that work ;
and I am going to preach to you not from the prophecy
as an abstract doctrine of inspiration, nor from that
great tidal wave of the new life that carried on its
crest preacher and hearers what time the new age was
ushered in ; but from this one definite illustration of
what the Holy Spirit did in the heart of a man — of
how it taught him to look out upon the future of
humanity.

We might call our subject the Holy Spirit and the
human outlook. ' I, John, saw the holy city, new
Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven.'
That was the vision of the Spirit. Let us accept it
as it is given to us. Let us not try to spiritualize it.
It is quite spiritual enough. Our business is to try
to understand it. Sometimes when we think we are
spiritualizing a thing we are really vapourizing it,
and there is our mist again.

Let us take it that this man who tells us he was in
the Spirit saw the holy city coming down from
God ; as radiant and beautiful as a bride adorned for
her husband. Some men look up and behold the face
of silence, and the plains of peace, and the glory of
the stars. And such a vision is worth something to
the life that sees it. But here is a man who was in
the Spirit, a man who had some share in the precious
mystery of the awakened and renewed heart, and

219

Inspiration and Outlook

when he looked up he saw not the light of the stars
— but the light of a city. My friends, divine inspira
tion is not only the greatest fact in life, but it is also
the most practical. It brings us near to God, but also
near to life. What does the city stand for ? It stands
for human life with all its possibilities, its problems,
and its pains. It stands for humanity in all its
relationships — all its inner forces and all its outward
forms. It stands for men and women, loving, toiling,
hoping, sorrowing, suffering, sinning.

Oh the message of the city and the need of it !
There is no mistaking it — there is no getting away
from it. It is no dream. It is naked and aggressive
reality. Whatever a city meant to St. John, we know
what it means to-day in our modern world. Many
of us here have come from one or other of the great
industrial centres. It is not too much to suppose that
we all know something about the existing conditions
of town life. The mention of the city makes us
think of dark courts, houses in which our brothers and
sisters ought never to live, the flaring yellow lights of
the public-houses, men and women whom poverty and
sin have reft of all the joy of living, and who steer
their lives by these flaring yellow lights, little children
with disease in their bones and unveiled sin before
their young eyes every day, a group of little fellows
on the pavement with their heads clustered together

220

Inspiration and Outlook

over a washy sporting paper — and all the abomina
tions and shames and pathos that Ruskin calls ' the
darkness of the terrible streets.' I know as well as
you do that that is not all. There is many a sweet
and beautiful thing in the city. How could it be
otherwise ? If there is any truth in the great thought
that lies at the heart of this festival of the Christian
year — then the ( Spirit of the Lord is in the midst of
the city.' But, for all that, take it all in all, a great
city is the saddest place on God's earth ; and the
sadness and the sin that are found there are found in
proportionate measure in all the places, even the
seeming peaceful hamlets, where men dwell and work.
' I, John, saw the holy city coming down from God out
of heaven.' The more you think of it the less you
will wonder at this vision of St. John. When he says
he saw, as he did once see, harpers, and palm-bearers
and processions of angels and archangels, we may be
forgiven for saying to him — ' Well, and what of that ? '
But he saw a holy city, a city whose joys were clean
joys, whose pleasures were pure pleasures, whose
gains were honest gains, whose service was perfect
freedom — a city whose citizens walked and worked in
the light of God's face. Is not that what you and I
say we want to see ? Is it not what we ought to see ?
Nay, I will go further and ask is it not what — if we
are in the Spirit — we shall see ? A holy city. I

221

Inspiration and Outlook

don't mean by-and-by when God calls us to Him
self. I mean here and now. St. John was not in
heaven when he had his vision, he was — where God
grant this day's worship may bring us all — in the
Spirit.

St. John called the city New Jerusalem. I can
find it in my heart to be almost sorry that he named
it. It shows his vision was practical ; but it has
helped to make our vision vague and remote. When
St. John spoke of the New Jerusalem, do you think
he had completely forgotten the old Jerusalem ?
Don't you think he thought it was time that they had
a new city ? Don't you think his vision taught him it
could be made new ? By what authority, pray, have
we translated this expression New Jerusalem by that
vague word heaven ? It is all wrong. For the last
three years I have been calling it Birmingham. My
friends, we shall do no good in the world, until under
the practical dominance of the Divine Spirit we come
to know, beyond a shadow of doubt, that the holy
city is not something to be longed for in the heavens
of God, but something to be builded in the earth
which is His also. We have sat and sung, ' Oh what
must it be to be there/ but that chorus does not hold
the high-water mark of the spirit-filled life. That life
at its best is not the life of a singer — it is the life of a
builder. Let us not do what many people — and I am

222

Inspiration and Outlook

afraid I must say specially young people — are doing,
and that is, think that the truest expression of the
spirit-filled life is in the lilt of popular mission song.
If you are in the Spirit and if the Spirit is in you, re
newing your mind and cleansing your heart, you will
find the question, ' What must it be to be there ? '
very secondary to this question, ' What will it be
like if only we can make here as beautiful as
there ? '

That is the work of the Spirit. We are not to be
singers of ' glory songs,' we are to be builders of the
city of God in the earth.

' 1 saw the holy city coming down from God out
of heaven.' Perhaps we have been too much con
cerned with where the Holy Spirit can lift us to and
prepare us for, to see as we should the vision of
what that Spirit has for us to do here and now. We
are very anxious that earth should go to heaven ; we
do not always lealize that the great purpose that God
the Spirit is to accomplish is just the opposite. He
is to bring heaven to earth. He is to make heaven
in our lives. Let us not think of heaven as a kind
of glorified suburb of earth to which the spiritually
successful may hope some day to retire and find a
bit of quiet. I should be sorry to think of a heaven
like that, and should have positively no desire to go
to it. Heaven is just what God is trying to make

223

Inspiration and Outlook

earth. Every city is meant to be a heavenly city.
Call to mind those grand words of Zechariah that we
read together just now, about God dwelling in the
city — a real earthly city, mind you, with its old folk
leaning on their staves, and its little children playing
in the street — and making it a city of truth. That is
what God is doing. Never a day passes in the cities
of men in which this great miracle of the Spirit does
not take place. It is a continuous miracle. Call it
what you like — renewal, regeneration, the new life,
the baptism of the Spirit — call it all these things, it is
the holy city with its light and law and love coming
down into the hearts of the children of men. And
you see what that means. It means another absolutely
honest man in the market-place, another light-filled
life in the workshop, another man with the sin of the
city under his feet, another breath of prayer and
reverence and godliness going forth to sweeten the
life of the factory, the school, the home, the study,
and the street. This is the fruit of the Spirit.

This is not all. There is a fathomless mystical
story of the Spirit that no man can tell. There is all
the infinite grace and mystery that must belong to
the life of God living itself out through the mind and
heart and character of them that trust Him. There
are anointings for special work, and baptisms of know
ledge and power for individual souls. But all these

224

Inspiration and Outlook

things issue in the fact that the Spirit of God in our
hearts will first of all and always make us look for the
holy city and work for it. It will make us bold to claim
here and now all that belongs to it. ' There shall
be no night there.' Why wait for heaven to interpret
that for you? Is not the night the parable of all
dark and evil things ? No night there ; then no night
here — no slum, no drunkard, no gambler, no thief, no
pauper, no libertine. That is not the final ideal for
the age of the Spirit, but if you try to live up to that
in your prayer and faith and toil, you will, I think,
be busy for some time to come, and you will be
well employed.

Oh this city, this new and glorious city coming
down from God out of heaven ! How can we see it?
How can the light of its towers, and the delight of all
its pleasant places, and the beauty of its life and
the sweetness of its laws, — I say how can these things
kindle our imagination and fill us with enthusiasm
and devotion if we never see them? And this is the
vision for them that are in the Spirit.

This brings us, where every study of religion or of
life brings us, face to face with a personal question.
All religion is personal religion. We may talk of the
family or the city or the nation or the human race —
but these are only terms in which we think of a larger

or smaller number of individuals. No matter how
p 225

Inspiration and Outlook

big and wide the truth you are thinking about, think
about it long enough and honestly enough, and you
will find yourself alone with it in the chamber of your
heart. Only the holy heart can see the holy city.
We have but one tiny window through which to get our
view of life, and everything depends on whether that
window be clean. And let us follow this thought a
step farther. The holy city can only come through
the holy citizen. That which is to be the light and
law of the city must first be the light and law of the
house. I mean the house of life. The coming of the
holy city may be discussed in the larger councils of
men — it can only be decided on each man's own
threshold and in each man's own heart. How stands
it, then, with you, my friend ?

Here on this great Festival Day of the Spirit — and
in every day that dawns and dies — it is yours to
accept or reject the grace of the Holy Spirit offered
to your heart ; and so, doing the one or the other as
you must, you hasten or retard the building of the
holy city in the life of the world.

226

XXII

True Imperialism

The shadow of Egypt. — ISA. xxx. 2.

MANY of the changes that time brings are on
the surface of life. There is a certain stability
at the heart of things. The great laws of life change
not. The selfsame sunlight that put an end to
Jacob's conflict with the angel gilds our joys and
guides our toils to-day. So is it with these human
hearts of ours. So is it with the great common
sentiments and necessities. Motives that swayed
men's lives when the world was young can be traced
in modern life. Life changes its costume more easily
than it changes its character. When we say that
history repeats itself, we do not mean that there are
occasional coincidences ; we mean rather that the best
and the worst in human life have a tendency to per
petuate themselves, and that through all the ages the
human heart beats to the same tune, cherishes some
of the same nobilities and the same follies, and shows

P 2 227

True Imperialism

itself capable of much that is fine and much that is
contemptible.

So we may go back through very many centuries
and find in a bit of ancient history that which is
repeating itself in the life of to-day. The national
question among the Jews of Hezekiah's day was, How
can we shake off the Assyrian yoke ? And the popular
solution of the problem was, Enter into an alliance
with Egypt. True, Egypt was a land of many
idols, but it was also a land of many horses and
chariots, and full coffers. And there have always
been those in the world who, when they have wanted
chariots, have not been over particular where they
borrowed them. There have always been those who
would fraternize with an idolater — provided he was a
rich idolater. Egypt was powerful with that kind of
power that the world and the devil can fully appre
ciate. There is a might that calls to the world in the
clang of iron and the thunder of horsemen and the
clink of gold, and many there be that trust in it.
There is a might that lifts not up its voice in the
clamour of the world, but that pleads its rights and its
power in the silences of thought, in the quiet inner
place where conscience dwells, in the depths of all
true feeling, and on the lonely heights of the ideal —
and would to God that you and I had more faith
in it.

228

True Imperialism

The choice between these two is ever before us.
Since the days of Hezekiah, kingdoms have risen
to greatness and sunk into oblivion. The great
centres of power and industry, of learning and
dominion, have shifted steadily westward. Places
that once pulsated with industrial activity and political
influence have now little more than an archaeological
significance. But the heart of the West to-day is as
the heart of the East in many a dim yesterday, and
the thing against which the Jewish prophet protested
is the thing against which some one must protest
still — even trust in the shadow of Egypt. Recall
for a moment the stately and spiritual interest of a
song that Israel sang in the days of a purer and more
reverent national life. 'He that dwelleth in the
secret place of the Most High shall abide under the
shadow of the Almighty. I will say of the Lord, He
is my refuge and my fortress, my God in whom I trust.
Surely He shall deliver thee.' Then the shadow of
Egypt fell on the people. They transferred their
allegiance, not deliberately, but none the less really,
from the unseen to the seen. The great changes of
life, and especially those for the worse, are often
undeliberate.

Now I want you to think for a moment about our
own dear country — this England of ours we love so
well. Of recent years a great word has been upon

229

True Imperialism

our lips, and that word is Imperialism. And it is a
noble and worthy word. It stands for something
that finds room for the expansive and unselfish powers
of a great people. But there are things associated
with this thing as men name it and think of it and
seek it to-day, that lack nobility and pure worth. As
I hear it there is too much thunder in it. It is too
suggestive of chariots and horsemen and the strength
of iron and the worth of gold. The shadow of Egypt
is upon it. If we are to save this great word Empire
from belittlement and abuse, if we are to keep the
dignity of it intact and the glory of it unstained, if
we are to save it from becoming the catchword of
politicians or a high-sounding name for greedy com
mercialism, we must take it out of the shadow of
Egypt, where great things lose their greatness and
noble things their nobility, and we must let the shadow
of the Almighty fall upon it. The true Imperialism
is to be realized and safeguarded not by those who
are looking for a wider frontier — but by those who
are seeking a higher faith. Whenever an Empire has
been threatened, the first whisper of that threat has
always been heard in the streets of its own cities.
The peril of a nation, as the peril of a soul, is ever
within and not without. Read your Gibbon, and you
shall catch the first warning of Rome's ruin not in the
growls of the Goths whose heroes came up against her,

230

True Imperialism

but in the feasting and the boasting and noting of that
vicious capital and of all the cities of that Empire.
The things that threaten national prestige and power,
even as the things that make them, are found in the
heart of the people. I fo'r one believe that the day is
not far distant when he alone will be hailed as an
Imperialist who thinks more of his country's obliga
tions than of its rights, more of its debts than its dues,
more of the grave and holy responsibility of power
possessed than of the acquisition of more. We shall
come to see that a man cannot think imperially unless
he thinks unselfishly. The safety and the sovereignty
of England has never been in the sole keeping of the
diplomat, the general, and the admiral. It has ever
been, and will ever be in all who stand for the
Empire of the Christ, who know that the foundations
of true dominion are not dug with the sword, that
a nation is great not by the sweep of its territory
but by the justice and mercy of its rule, that national
wealth is not a thing of square miles and golden
millions but of godliness, truth, and love — of power to
see and fitness to serve the high abiding spiritual
interests of our common humanity.

God has given to our Island Race the spirit of
enterprise and adventure. England's sons fare forth
into all the world — her ships are in all ports, by
colonial and commercial activity she has lines of

231

True Imperialism

influence going out into all the earth. The story
of how all this has come to pass — the story of
England's admirals and soldiers and statesmen, her
thinkers and teachers and her sons of toil — is a splendid
story. But what is to be the next chapter in that
story? Other great powers have climbed side by
side with us, sharers in the same civilization, and, in
some cases, in the same faith. Materialism some
times suggests to us the possibility of an Arma
geddon, an awful physical struggle of the European
powers. But the thing that is coming, yea, has
already come, is a different kind of fight. It is a
spiritual Armageddon. The shadow of Egypt will be
no protection in this fight. We must carry our ideas,
our policy, our patriotism, our earthly service, out of
the shadow of Egypt into that other shadow where
men find God — His will and His grace. For the last
arbitrament of life is always divine, and the higher
stages of all world -struggles are determined by the
cleanness or uncleanness of the souls of them that
strive. It is the work of the Christian Church to
fashion within its borders and to send forth into the
world the ideal patriot, the man who can enter with
warm and passionate enthusiasm into the service of
his country, bringing into that service the pure ideal
and unselfish ministry of the kingdom of the selfless
King.

23*

True Imperialism

And now let us try to bring all this home to our
own hearts. The difference between the nation and
the individual is mainly a quantitative one. If the
national confidence is in the shadow of Egypt, it
is because the individual confidence is there. The
shadow of an earthly ideal, an unspiritual interpreta
tion of life, a material estimate of success, has fallen
on our separate soirls. No wonder that men miss
the divinity of history, and leave God out of their
widest reckonings and their corporate counsels, when
they fail to find them in their toil for bread, and,
reversing the word of Scripture, say, ' We walk by
sight and not by faith.'

My friends, the first debt that you and I owe to
our country must be paid to our God. The highest
service that any man can render to the Fatherland is
the service of faith. To dwell in the secret place of
the Most High, and abide under the shadow of the
Almighty ; to lay up treasure in heaven ; to be reverent
and prayerful and unselfish ; to lean on God amid the
simple toils and necessities and pains of one's daily
life; to manifest the heroism that passes unrecognized
among men because it is heroism, and, therefore,
clothed in humility ; to be less worldly than you
are often tempted to be ; to believe in the deathless
divinity of conscience, duty, and love, — this is the
higher patriotism, into whose hands at last the

233

True Imperialism

honour and the peace of any people must be
placed for safe keeping.

There is a vision that some can see already, and
that maybe all shall see some day. It comes to the
hearts of men from the village of Nazareth, from one
who was the King of men because He could love more
and suffer more and help more than anyone else. It
is a vision of Empire not territorial, for He said, * A
man's life consisteth not in the abundance of the things
that he possesseth ' ; not martial, for He said, ' Put up
thy sword.' It is moral. It is the vision of the
human brotherhood ever being more largely under
stood and more fully realized among men. Oh for
the unworldly dream of that other kingdom — the
Empire of the Christ !

Something kindlier, higher, holier,
All for each and each for all.
Earth at last a warless world,
A single race, a single tongue.

Every tiger madness muzzled,
Every serpent passion killed,
Every grim ravine a garden,
Every blazing desert tilled.

Robed in universal harvest,
Up to either pole she smiles ;
Universal ocean softly
Washing all her warless isles.

234

True Imperialism

My friends, live for that day. The more you live
for it, the sooner the world shall see it. Find your
ideal in the Shadow of the Almighty. This is the
highest service of the Fatherland. This is the patriot
ism that lives on to bless, though the patriot himself
passes away. This is the deathless imperialism of
godliness.

'35

XXIII
The Hireling Shepherd

He that is an hire ling. —JOHN x. 12.

WHEN Jesus used an allegory, He always chose
one that would have an enduring significance
— one that would not only appeal forcefully to those to
whom He was speaking, but that would have nothing
in the form of it to prevent it from yielding up its
meaning easily and completely to reverent seekers
after truth through all time. The simple figure of
shepherding, into which Jesus wove some of His most
mystical, as well as some of His most practical, teach
ing, speaks to us all. True, there are some beautiful
shades of meaning in the figure that only appear when
it is placed in its original Oriental setting ; but, quite
apart from that, the figure of the Good Shepherd,
under which Jesus spoke of Himself, has ever brought
wondrous comfort to the heart of the Christian
Church. The Eastern and Western mind alike have
loved to read the message of God's protecting and

236

The Hireling; Shepherd

redeeming love in this divine pastoral. To the sunny
heart of a little child and the world-weary heart of a
sinner there is no more winning picture to be found
than that of the Shepherd of Souls, who lived and
died for His sheep.

As we read this tender allegory, the Good Shepherd
passes before our eyes, a gracious, well-loved, re*
assuring figure. All about Him there is an atmo
sphere that induces confidence. A sense of security
pervades the story. The bond between Him and
His flock is high and perfect. He knows their
names. They know His voice ; they recognize its
tones ; they cannot be deceived. And whether
they are biding in the fold or being put forth to
pasture, it is enough for them to know that He is
near. By-and-by a stranger comes. He calls to the
sheep, but no ill comes of his calling. It falls on un
responsive ears. It means nothing to the sheep, for
they know not the voice of strangers. Presently a
darker shadow than that of the stranger falls on the
story. It is the slouching, malign figure of a thief
1 come that he may steal and kill and destroy.' Here
the unresponsiveness of innocence will avail the sheep
nothing. Innocence may deliver the soul from the
crafty, but not from the cruel. For a moment we
tremble. But listen, the Shepherd speaks : * I am
come that they may have life, and may have it more

237

The Hireling Shepherd

abundantly. The Good Shepherd layeth down His
life for the sheep.' All is well. We have no fear of
that cruel figure crouching in the shadow of the
sheepfold wall, hate in his eyes and a weapon in his
hand. The peace of the story deepens. The thief
is as powerless as the stranger. That is the story of
Christ's love for His own — a story that is woven into
all the years. Age after age the sophistries and
cruelties of the world that knows not God have beset
the flock of Jesus ; and all to no purpose save to
make this plain, that craft and violence alike are vain
whilst that Love that is unto death keeps watch about
the fold.

But I think that whilst we read in this rich allegory
of the Good Shepherd the message of God's love for
men, and His nearness to them in their needs and
perils, we fail to see that there is another message
that concerns not only our needs in the sight of God,
but our duties among our fellows. There is only one
Good Shepherd, and we are His sheep. That figure
relates to our individual lives, or to the corporate life
of the Church, as dependent upon God in Jesus
Christ. But what about our relationship to others?
What about our place in the world? What about
deep human need, not as we experience it, but as we
have to try to meet it? The pastoral figure speaks
to us not only of personal satisfaction, but of personal

238

The Hireling Shepherd

responsibility. The staff of our pilgrimage is fashioned
strangely like a shepherd's crook. We all have partly
in our keeping some of the fair and precious things in
other souls. We are called to be humble brothers,
lowly servants of the Good Shepherd. We have to
keep watch and ward among the sheepfolds. And
surely Jesus Himself meant that we should find in
this great allegory that which should teach us not
only where to place our faith, but also how to do our
work. Surely He meant us to find that ideal of sym
pathy and personal devotion, of vigilance, courage, and
sacrifice, in the power of which alone we can hope to
serve our needy brethren.

If we are in danger of missing this aspect of His
pastoral figure, the words about the hireling shep
herd most forcibly bring it before our minds and home
to our hearts. This shameful picture of a shepherd
leaving his flock to the mercy of the wild beasts
could have had no place in the allegory if Jesus had
not been speaking of our service of the world, as
well as His. Not even by way of contrast is that
wretched coward admissible if we are to think only
of the Good Shepherd's own personal work. But
reading, as I feel we must read, the law and fashion
of our own service in that of the Shepherd Himself,
allowing, of course, for all that sets the Eternal Christ
for ever above and beyond us in the service of man,

239

The Hireling Shepherd

the figure of the hireling brings home some deep and
searching truths to our hearts.

The picture of the hireling shepherd is introduced
just when the allegory has reached its highest point
of thought and uttered its noblest message : ' The
Good Shepherd layeth down His life for the sheep.'
That is the last heroism of faithfulness, the final seal
of sacrifice ; the unutterable, convincing tragedy of
love. Suddenly our gaze is turned to another
scene.

Still we are among the sheepfolds. Still a shep
herd is keeping watch. And lo ! a gaunt and hungry
wolf leaps into the flock before their shepherd's eyes.
And in a moment the shepherd drops his heavy staff,
wraps his long outer garment about his waist, and flees
for his life. And the wolf has its cruel will of the
deserted sheep. Surely Jesus set this shameful picture
of the coward shepherd fleeing like the wind with the
snarl of the wolf in his ears just where He did set
it — against a fair background of courage, love, and
sacrifice — to warn us against unfaithfulness in life's high
task, and to teach us what manner of men we must be
if we are to do that task as it should be done.

'The hireling fleeth because he is an hireling.'
How those words get brought down through our
work into our character ! How they search the hidden
springs of action in human life ! And we do not

240

The Hireling Shepherd

submit willingly to the searching. We are prone to
believe that there is a good deal of chance work in
life, and that much that we say and do (chiefly, be it
said, our least creditable words and deeds) has but a
very slight and casual relation to what we really are.
How often men salve their consciences for something
not quite true in speech, or just in action, by assur
ing themselves that after all they are in the main
truthful and just in character ! How they silence the
judgement of conscience on their evil ways by singing
the praises of their good disposition ! And this is a
perilous and even disastrous way of making life's
reckonings. Of course, conduct is never a literal
transcript of thought, or an exact equivalent of in
tention. Taking life moment by moment, and judg
ing it deed by deed, it is often easy to find some
small discrepancy between the inner and the outer fact.
Being is always a larger and more complicated thing
than doing. But if we let this thought enter into
moral calculations and affect our self-criticism, we
must remember that it cuts both ways. If we are
sometimes better than our good deeds, we are quite
as often worse than our bad deeds. But it is our
wisdom to abandon this method of calculation, not
because it cannot comfort us, but because it can con
fuse us. It may hide from us the fact that there is a
real and vital relation between what we really are and
Q 241

The Hireling Shepherd

what we do. We come far short of our ideal, but we
never get very far from the level of our character.
Character may be itself lifted and purified and en
nobled. That is the miracle of grace. But character,
be it good or bad, is the determining force of action.
That is the law of service. And to acknowledge this
is vital to that profound moral and spiritual amend
ment that is the secret of all good works.

' The hireling fleeth because he is an hireling.' But
that is too often the last reason he gives to himself or
to any one else for his flight, and so he goes on being
a hireling. His explanation of his action is that he
was taken by surprise, or that he was tired (forgetting,
by the by, that he was not too tired to run), or that he
had not a reliable weapon in his hand, or that he went
to seek help. The only thing he will not say is that
he ran away because he is a poor, mean-spirited fellow,
who tries to get as much as he can out of life, and to
give as little as possible in exchange for it. My
friends, I do not want to discourage you, nor myself,
in this life of ours, where almost every day records
something discreditable and disappointing. But I do
say that as we read these records we must be ready
to forgo the false comfort of an excuse. There is
one precious thing hidden for a God-seeking soul in
his most shameful failure, and that is the shame of it.
And that can only come and do its work as a man

242

The Hireling Shepherd

dares in the light of truth and by the grace of God
to say in that evil hour, that sinful moment, ' There
is not only a combination of difficult circumstances, a
surprise, a snare, an ambuscade of the devil, there is
something of what I am, and ought not to be.' That
confession is an essential part of our deliverance. It
is the secret of a better life to-morrow. The hireling
is an hireling till the day he dares to take into his
soul the bitter shame of calling himself one. And in
that very confession he becomes something better
than the thing he has confessed himself to be.

Perhaps a word or two may be permitted con
cerning the suddenness of this man's temptation. I
think that Jesus meant us to find some emphatic
significance in this feature of the story. He was
dealing with a man's basal and continual relationship
to his God-given task. The hireling in the allegory
might have said that it was hardly fair to judge him
by one weak moment. He had looked after the
flock fairly well; he had counted them morning and
evening, led them to pasturage, and kept them from
straying. Was this all to be forgotten in one flight
from duty? The wolf came so suddenly. He had
no time to collect himself. He found himself taking
to his heels, and, once on the run, he could not stop.
In justice to this shamed man, in justice to the pure
and dreadful truth, how much is there in this plea?

Q2 243

The Hireling Shepherd

Very little when you come to look into things. And
here, again, I do not want to say a word of dis
couragement. But let us be willing to face things
as they are. That is the secret of abiding encourage
ment. It is in the surprises of life that we reap the
reward of character. Honour and dishonour are not
sprung upon us. In the whirl of things we seize that
which we have learned most to value, and hold that
which we have made ourselves strong enough to keep.
Whatever is snatched from us, some of the explanation
of the loss lies in our own fingers. The spontaneous
things in life have the longest history. The thing
that responds to the spur of the moment is the habit
of the years. Half the value of character-building
would be swept away if it were not a fact that a man
is gloriously or shamefully himself in the moment
when he must act without deliberation. What he
does in that moment is the real resultant of his
character, though it may give the lie to his ideal.
Mind you, I say ' morally.' Good men make
mistakes. A man suddenly called upon to act
may do the wrong thing, and yet do his duty. The
saints make mistakes. A brave shepherd may make
a tactical error, but only a hireling runs away from a
wolf. We talk about a man rising to an occasion,
but in the last deep truth of things that is a shallow
and misleading phrase. No man ever rose to an

244

The Hireling Shepherd

occasion. If he meets the great occasion and deals
with it as it should be dealt with, it is because he
is living all the while on the level of that occasion.
The most that the largest occasion can do for us is
to give us an opportunity of being what we are. It
cannot by the magic of its swift demands make us
in a moment what we ought or ought not to be.

But let us turn from the question of the vital basal
place that character holds in all service to the question
of what kind of a character is essential to the best
service. This question becomes really very simple
when we get back to the Good Shepherd and to the
thought of ourselves as being called in somewise to
follow Him in the daily pastorate of sympathy and
of service. Love is at once the germ and the spirit
of it. The hireling is contrasted with the Good
Shepherd in that the bond between the hireling and
his work was a bond of selfishness and not a bond of
love. The hireling works simply for wages. He is
the picture for all time of the utter incompetence
of selfishness to perform the great task of life. No
ideal lends one glint of glory to the hireling's work.
No enthusiasm makes it throb with sweet strong
life. No hidden springs of sacrifice make the doing
of it of some lasting worth to the toiler himself, or to
the world in which his toil lies. And, worst of all,
in the thing hardest to do and most worth doing, amid

245

The Hireling Shepherd

the precious pains and perils when it would so often
seem God bids us find life's most precious oppor
tunities, the hireling — the man with the inadequate
motive — fails his trust and his Master, and flees for his
life, not knowing that in that flight every step is
taking him farther away from the few things worth
saving — the price of his conscience, the cleanness of
his soul, the power to look in the face of the Great
Shepherd of the sheep.

We have, each of us, a place in the service of the
Good Shepherd and the folds where there are so
many hungry mouths to feed, so many weak souls
to protect, and out in the wilderness of sorrow and
sin where so many foolish and weary ones are
straying. Some of us have been called to the
Christian ministry, and so ' to tend the flock of God/
Pray for us, as we pray for ourselves, that when
the Chief Shepherd is manifested we may not be
ashamed and confounded. Some of us have charge
of the lambs of the flock — a charge that seems
sometimes too delicate and gracious a task for any
but the Good Shepherd Himself. Most of us have
in our partial keeping the peace and happiness and
spiritual safety of a little circle w~ meet at hearth
and board. Each of us has a place and a trust in
this great pastorate of life. How shall \\^ fill it?
How not fail in it ? How shall we glorify its

246

The Hireling Shepherd

drudgeries and meet its great occasions? Whence
the courage and good cheer, the patience, tenderness,
and hopefulness for all these things ?

The answer to these questions is not far to seek.
It is here. ' I am the Good Shepherd. The Good
Shepherd layeth down His life for the sheep.' The
symbol of our service may be the Shepherd's crook,
but the secret of our service is the Saviour's cross.
It is only by the grace of an ever-deepening com
munion with the eternal love of God made manifest
in Christ that the hireling spirit in its most subtle
forms and deep disguises can be tracked down in the
inmost recesses of our nature and driven forth from
the smallest details of our service. Duty and honour
and natural affection, and social instincts and generous
ideals, will help us much ; but no man may be sure
that he will not some day prove himself an hireling
spirit unless for him the cup of life has become the
cup of a sacrament, even, to use the great words of
St. Ignatius, ' the blood of Christ, which is immortal
love.'

247

XXIV
The Wilderness and the Sunrise

B**- And they journeyed from Oboth, and pitched at Ije-Abarim, in the
wilderness which is before Moab, towards the sunrising. — NUM. xxi. n.

LET us get away from the geography of this
passage. When we have done that the pas
sage reads like this. ' They journeyed ... in the
wilderness . . . towards the sunrising.' That is no
longer simply the story of an ancient nomadic people.
It is an epitome of life in God's hands. It is the
divinity of existence. It is a parable of providence
and grace. It would be easy to show how this read
ing of our text is illustrated in the story of Israel.
But I propose frankly to look at it in the light of
Christ. The teaching of Jesus is full of the tremulous
light of the dawn. It was a dawn-gospel that He
preached. It was the coming day that He heralded.
The true Christian theology is ever flushed with the
sunrise.

We often speak of Christ's hopefulness in dealing
with men and women. But that hopefulness was
rooted in something deeper and wider than the

The Wilderness and the Sunrise

individual. Jesus recognized that all the great posi
tive forces of life make for the light. Jesus found a
reason for optimism in the very nature of things — in
the very make of the universe. Life, in as far as it
fulfils itself according to the divine purpose, moves
sunward. Jesus had a keen sense of the direction
in which life was meant to travel. He knew the
great forces that make for darkness and confusion and
pain, but they are not the greatest and the deepest
and the most enduring forces in life. Jesus never
treated sin as an assertion. He always regarded it —
in its most assertive forms — as a negation, a contra
diction of the solemn, perfect words spoken by the
Creator of life before sin was, and by which He will
abide when sin is no more. Jesus knew more about
the sinfulness of the world than any one else could
ever know, and yet He never seemed to be expecting
to find sin in men's hearts. He was always looking
for something good. He never by His words or His
attitude regarded sin as inevitable. In all His relation
to human life Jesus never lost sight of that which
was meant to be, that in the human heart which re
sponded to Him and His gospel. Above the fact
that a man has yielded to evil He placed the fact that
a man can respond to good. He did honour to man
as he exists in the holy and positive purpose of the
Divine Creator.

249

The Wilderness and the Sunrise

As we look at the world through Christ's eyes, we
see that sin is not a purpose, it is the frustration of
a purpose. Sin is not a law, it is the violation of a
law ; it is an attempt to interrupt the continuous
principle of good, and the principle is older and
stronger and nearer to life than the interruption.
Strictly speaking, sin is not the rule ; it is the ex
ception. The exception may seem to be greater than
the rule. Perhaps in its present results, as we tabulate
them, it is greater. But it is at the best only a quan
titative greatness. Good is the divine rule of life and
its essential and vital law. Sin is a stumbling-block
in the way of the soul's destiny. It may thwart that
destiny and bring it to nought, but it cannot take its
place as the positive rule of life. The gospel of Jesus
teaches us that sin is not destiny. It is not, and
cannot be, the great life direction of the world. Mind
you, Jesus did not teach a gospel of ease, a policy of
drift, an automatic salvation, an unfounded and hazy
optimism, unable to give any account of itself.
He taught that all personal issues of life are
folded in personal character and conduct, in the
heart's faith or unfaith, in the soul's purity or
impurity. But looking beyond the question of
individual destiny, Jesus taught that, whether we greet
that light with gladness or shamefastness, it will come
— this sunrise judgement, this victory of good, this

250

The Wilderness and the Sunrise

divine conquest over all the darkness and shadows of
the world.

And this view of human destiny is the one thing
that can produce in every man the right temper for a
successful battle with sin and sorrow. Apart from
Jesus Christ men are apt to put a full stop at this
word wilderness — and one is not wholly surprised at
that punctuation. * They journeyed in the wilderness.'
For some that tells the whole story of life. They
underline the word wilderness. They sigh the word
out. They linger over it with the morbid dalliance
of those who feel shut up to believing the worst about
themselves and their fellow men and the world.
They become under its influence epicures in sadness.
People who are always painting studies in grey,
people who forget the fine days but keep a careful
account of the rainfall, not knowing that rain is as
precious as sunshine, — these are the pessimists ; and
if you would find out whether or no they really
deserve the name, set them to read this text, ' And
they journeyed in the wilderness toward the sunrising.'
Not one of them can read it. ' And they journeyed in
the wilderness.' They get that far, and there they
stick. They cannot get past this word wilderness.
With them it is a final word ; it is the summing-up
of things ; it is life epitomized. So it is a great
word, and always has been, in the vocabulary of

The Wilderness and the Sunrise

the pessimists. They emphasize it. They repeat it.
They adorn it with unwholesome adjectives. They
call it a waste, howling wilderness. There is no
beauty and there is even no quietness. It is a
wilderness bereft of those few dubious advantages
which even such a region is usually supposed to
possess. ' This wilderness/ That is their text when
they preach, their promise when they prophesy, and
their memory when they look back.

Now to all these people whose spirits are tinged or
stained with pessimism — the gloomy-minded, the
low-spirited, the dissatisfied, the shamefast, the toil-
broken, the sin-broken — the gospel of Jesus applies
one great healing and saving principle ; it adds
something to their motto ; it finishes this text for
them; it says, You journey in the wilderness — yes,
that is beyond dispute — but toward the sunrising.
Jesus offers to the whole world a gospel with the
sunrise in it. He offers it to the individual. Pessi
mism has a moral basis — a moral cause. There is a
simple solution of life which, like other beautiful and
precious things, is far too simple for the preacher as a
rule to dare to offer it to an enlightened and critical
modern congregation, and it is this, 'Be good and
you will be happy.' There is the philosophy of the
gospel in that trite exhortation. Jesus turns a man's
face to the light, the love-light, the truth-light, the

252

The Wilderness and the Sunrise

hope-light, and all in the man's soul that has any
kinship with light and any power of response to it
begins to send out little feelers toward the sun ; and
that man finds that, looking eastward, the wilderness
loses its grey and grim aspect, and walking in the
light of Jesus — the light of faith and worship, of com
panionship and communion with the true sources of
his being — he comes to the place where the wilderness
doth rejoice and blossom as the rose. He finds in the
wilderness grateful shade as of Lebanon, and vision
as far and glorious as from the peak of Carmel by the
sea. ' The glory of Lebanon shall be given unto it,
the excellency of Carmel and Sharon/

' Through the wilderness,' with its waste places and
its wild beasts. Yes, we must grant that. We must
all go a long way with the pessimist as he describes
the foolish, passionate, fevered, ill-regulated, lawless
life of humanity. But to every life that companies
with Christ it is given to add, ' towards the sunrising.'
Light and peace, wisdom and perfect government, the
joy of obedience — the fulfilment of being — God Him
self. That is, and ever must be, the great positive set
of the current of life. To deny that is worse than
pessimism ; it is atheism.

But further, as there is a pessimism of sin, so also
there is a pessimism of pain. ' Through the wilder
ness ' — that is written on the itinerary of every soul.

253

The Wilderness and the Sunrise

That is part of every man's story. Some tread a
path that seems to lie wholly in the wilderness — seems
to pass through the heart of its loneliest and most
desolate places ; some only skirt it for a while, but all
know something about it. It is a great problem.
One could understand it if the wilderness experiences
of life were strictly confined to those who might seem
to have merited such a discipline — though in that
case the wilderness would be a populous region ; but
so often it is the godly, the spiritually earnest, whose
faces are turned towards the 'way that is desert.'
But there is an explanation : for all these spirits the
path of pain leads into the eye of the dawn.

It is a hard way, but it is not a blind way. The
path is grievous, but the direction is good. As a
little poem says — a poem written by a friend of mine
to another friend in the days of his heart's need, the day
when a great trouble had turned his face toward the
wilderness way :

But One Traveller, old friend,

Hath minished this way of its dread ;

'Tis the shortest path in the end
To heaven that a man can tread.

There are those, I know, who wept
When first o'er its stones they went,

But 'twas Bethel whene'er they slept,
And each waking divine content.

254

The Wilderness and the Sunrise

And if in heaven I feel grief,

I feel it may be for this :
That not by the sorrowful way and brief

God led my soul to His bliss.

' Towards the sunrising.' O my friends, whatever
you do don't miss that, Don't let go of this Dawn-
Gospel. The wilderness — life's inhospitable and un
fruitful hours, the grey monotonies, the manifold
ministries of disappointment and loneliness and
sorrow — it is among these things that the path lies ;
but it is to something wholly unlike these things that
the path leads. Beyond the wilderness there is the
sunrise-land, and maybe, as the poem says, the wilder
ness path is the shortest way thither.

And now to set before you once again the personal
aspect of all this. I have spoken of the drift of
things, of a world that is made to seek the light of
the final victory of truth and beauty and peace, and
of the unworldly hope born in the hearts of the
sorrowful. I do not take a word of it back. I am
fully persuaded that the gospel of Jesus Christ
teaches the lifewardness of humanity. But this much
must be said. Each man determines for himself
whether he takes his place in the pilgrimage toward
the light, * They journeyed in the wilderness ' — that
is true of all men ; that is life as it must be. ' They
journeyed towards the sunrising' — that is true of all

2S5

The Wilderness and the Sunrise

men as far as their possibilities and opportunities are
concerned. But destiny is of our own deciding and
fashioning. It shall be for each of us even as our faith
or unbelief, our obedience or disobedience, our love or
our selfishness shall determine. To lay the waste and
sin of your life at the foot of Christ's Cross ; to lean on
that infinite mercy manifested in Him — a mercy that
remembers your needs and forgets your sin ; and to
find in all your trouble God's message to your soul, —
this is to journey in the wilderness, but toward the
sunrising.

Richard Clay & Sons, Limited, London <W